Thread: To start a web hosting company, how much would it cost?

So I was wondering. How much money would I need to start my own web hosting company, or service I shall say? I want to try and start a small one and build it up if possible, but I figure it's quite costly even for a small time service.

You can open a reseller account with many of the major hosting companies for minimum investment. They will handle the hardware maintenance and customer service for you. Generally they will provide the cpanel (and the license) for the accounts you sell.

The next step might be a dedicated server or colo hosting for a server you own. You would need to ensure that there were adequate resources and bandwidth available to keep your clients happy and you would have some primary customer service responsibilities. You would also have to pay for hardware upgrades either through higher fees or direct billing for tech time. You may also have to investigate the cpanel licensing structure. Bandwidth might become a major line item in your expenses if you provide hosting for busy sites. There are also matters of security that you would need to address. (Reading between the lines, I think that HostGator grew to being a major factor in the hosting business without ever building their own data center. The company was sold last year to a corporation that owns their own data center and several other hosting company brands. I have a HostGator account and saw a slight decline in the quality of service when the account was transferred to a different server but I did not know at that time what the real situation was. I look for a further decline in service as the new corporate culture sinks in.)

The final step for a major hosting service would be to establish a full blown data center at great expense. A state of the art data center would be housed in a building specifically built for the purpose. Typically a data center building would have a near clean room controlled environment with redundant high capacity air conditioning systems and on site backup power in the form of a diesel generator with a fuel supply large enough to operate through a worst case power outage.

Nearly any computer can be set up as a server. The major difference between a regular computer and a server is the operating system. Hosting companies and data centers generally use specialized hardware, but it is the OS that makes it a server, not the hardware.

This type of business will require more capital to start,the best way is to have money before you start not to get stalk along the way.

I agree with Antokay, try to have in your PayPal account at least $100, just in case

If you are starting then start as a reseller. A beginner reseller account will cost you less than $500 for one year and when your business grows in one year you can put more money in buying hardware and software resources, hiring trained staff more but all this will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Why don't you try the free web hosting services offered by different companies. it will help you gain a little experience to start with.