Ideas to improve my hosting service?

Well I own a few dedicated servers and I run a hosting business.. I have around 10 customers at the moment and as far as I am aware all of them are happy with the service they are getting.. I know of a few things I could do on support to improve but I'm talking about other things.

I don't have the livechat system on much which is what I think would result in less sales. I do however answer any support tickets as soon as I am able to at max of a few hours. I know allot about the server so I have optimized and secured it properly I think. I think my weak point is advertising though since I do not pay for any adverts.
I would give a link out to my site but that might be against the rules here so I wont unless I get permission or PM it.
I have 99% up time as the server is never down with the exception of the 60 day reboot I do. My site I created myself however I have not had a chance to put the new version up yet as I have not tested it in every browser but the front page does have some issues with IE and is slightly confusing but I have a fix on the way for all that. Perhaps my major loss is the domains. I do offer free sub domains but I don't offer free full domains.. I usually refer customers to 123-reg.

I have had a few potential customers slip away for hosts that offer 'unlimited' HDD space packages even though I try to explain to them that 2GB (My smallest package) is more than enough for the majority of web sites, do you agree?

Well I think I listed my weak points what do you think I should do to improve? Should I change to be like the others and offer unlimited HDD space which I think is not realistic?

Oh and sometimes I help out my customers with other server problems even though they don't have that service from me. Such as last night I was helping someone setup a Garry's Mod server.

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Nov-09 15:57:57)

You should advise those customers slipping away to unlimited HDD / Bandwidth competitors to check the T's & C's very carefully. There will be the usual 'fair use' clauses and typically a clause about not using the HDD space for anything other than files related to the hosted site. Many people taking these offers do so thinking that they have found a cheap offline backup solution, only to have their account terminated when they try uploading their entire mp3 collection for safe storage.

Bandwidth and processor utilisation is generally even more heavily policed with even moderate site traffic triggering the provider to dump the customer or require them to upgrade.

Although storage prices have come down, unlimited anything is clearly unsustainable. Any site running over 2GB is definitely large. Typically it is not the site itself that eats the space it is the mailboxes with over generous limits.

Even if you don't offer them for free you should probably look at getting a reseller standing with a domain reg so you can bundle domains in. As soon as that prospect goes off to look at domain registrar sites they will be hit with advertising from other hosting providers - lessening the chance they will ultimately sign up with yourself.

The hosting market is very hard to succeed in. There are very few ways to differentiate yourself from the crowd and their seem to be 2 buckets that providers mostly fall into:-

a. very cheap + everything unlimited + marketing overdrive
b. high quality + high reliability + immediate support 24/7 + little marketing.

Being in bucket b. and trying to differentiate yourself from those in a. for the customer new to hosting is nigh on impossible. All they go on is what the package offers and the price.

However, remaining in bucket b., provided you deliver the service correctly will see you attract a much less demanding customer base in terms of time and cost to support. Although your base will grow more slowly the average customer lifespan should be much longer.

If you really want to compete in the cheap mass market then realistically the only way to do it and turn a profit is to do so on their terms. There is no way you can price match and offer what is effectively a better service.

Hi

Unless you are able/prepared to look at significant investment, including support staff to prevent your own nervous breakdown, may be better not to try and compete on price.

Look for added value, develop unique selling points (even though they may not be entirely unique). There are still plenty of people who will pay a little extra for hosting, if they feel there is good reason.

That's partly because there sites are important to them and looking for ways to support those, as well as host them might be an idea. No point going down the "No skill needed, instant SEO, super success" route that the others all offer fairly meaninglessly. Put yourself in a position where you can truly support people's sites, through in depth, accurate knowledge. Plenty of lower end SME's will go with that.

In reply to a post by Killers2:

Well I own a few dedicated servers and I run a hosting business.. I have around 10 customers at the moment and as far as I am aware all of them are happy with the service they are getting.. I know of a few things I could do on support to improve but I'm talking about other things.

I don't have the livechat system on much which is what I think would result in less sales. I do however answer any support tickets as soon as I am able to at max of a few hours. I know allot about the server so I have optimized and secured it properly I think. I think my weak point is advertising though since I do not pay for any adverts.
I would give a link out to my site but that might be against the rules here so I wont unless I get permission or PM it.
I have 99% up time as the server is never down with the exception of the 60 day reboot I do. My site I created myself however I have not had a chance to put the new version up yet as I have not tested it in every browser but the front page does have some issues with IE and is slightly confusing but I have a fix on the way for all that. Perhaps my major loss is the domains. I do offer free sub domains but I don't offer free full domains.. I usually refer customers to 123-reg.

I have had a few potential customers slip away for hosts that offer 'unlimited' HDD space packages even though I try to explain to them that 2GB (My smallest package) is more than enough for the majority of web sites, do you agree?

Well I think I listed my weak points what do you think I should do to improve? Should I change to be like the others and offer unlimited HDD space which I think is not realistic?

Oh and sometimes I help out my customers with other server problems even though they don't have that service from me. Such as last night I was helping someone setup a Garry's Mod server.

We being in the same position as you ..

Advertising is hard.. Google adwards is usless. We tried a £50 trial spend (free from google) and found the best clicks were from the content network rather than from the main search engine. We also found our spend increased ...

Look at advertising say $10 to $20 on specific high volume sites.

Live chat: we've used this > http://mibew.org/features.php and found it to be better and less annoying than other types.

Billing: we've used whmcs: This sits on a different site to our main one and is themed as our main one ..

Main site : has live adjustable pricing in sterling/euro/dollars and also has twitter intergeneration and facebook too..

Thanks for the responses. Mibew.org appears to be offline at the time of rewriting this message.. I use Livezilla which seams a little annoying and I also use WHMCS..
I presume for your currency's you are reading the values from WHMCS's database?

In reply to a post by Killers2:

Thanks for the responses. Mibew.org appears to be offline at the time of rewriting this message.. I use Livezilla which seams a little annoying and I also use WHMCS..
I presume for your currency's you are reading the values from WHMCS's database?

Yup and because its over two domains its needed some extra work. I have posted a how to on the tips section in their forums ...