The Business of Web Hosting Automation
If you’ve been discouraged by how competitive the web hosting industry has become, I urge you to reconsider. Sure there are probably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of web hosting companies, with new ones popping up every day, but fear not! The Web Hosting market is so massive, there’s plenty of room for you to grab your own piece of the pie. Just about everyone has their own website these days and they all need a place to host it, so you can be the one to provide this valuable service and claim your share of this highly lucrative market.
Virtually every aspect of running your web hosting business can be automated these days. Web Hosting Control panels such as Plesk, Ensim and Cpanel are standard fare with every web hosting package. They allow your customers (end-users) to create email accounts and FTP accounts, check their stats, install software and more, often with just a few mouse clicks. Most of these control panels are based on a three tiered system, where the hosting company has administrative access on the server level, while resellers can manage multiple domains at the reseller level, then all the customers of the reseller each get their own instance of the control panel to manage their own email, ftp, stats and more.
Generally, hosting resellers are responsible for providing technical support to their end users, although some companies are now providing end-user support as well, freeing up the reseller even more to concentrate on marketing and growing his customer base. Automation at the control panel level is essential and the more tasks your end users can complete on their own, the better off you’ll be and the more time you’ll have to concentrate on marketing and other tasks.
Providing technical support to your customers can also be a challenge to those first entering the web hosting business, You’ll need to have some basic understanding of server administration and DNS or be able to hire someone who can help you. Again, there are companies to whom you can outsource your technical support needs and many of these companies operate through an automated web based support ticketing system such as Kayako E-Support or something similar. These systems will often allow for a mix of outsourced and in-house support reps while remaining transparent to the end-user.
Then there is the billing and provisioning aspect of your hosting business. This too can be easily automated these days using software like Moderngigabyte’s Modernbill or WHMCS. Both of these systems will integrate with your servers and control panels (Cpanel, Plesk, Ensim etc.) as well as with many domain registrars and merchant card and payment processors such as Authorizenet and Paypal, to provide a complete end to end automated provisioning and billing system. These types of systems generally integrate some type of order form or order wizard as well, making for a truly complete automated system. When set up properly, a prospective customer will be able to view your packages and pricing options on your website, register for the plan he wants to purchase, register a new domain name, enter his contact and payment info and complete the signup process.
Then an invoice is sent by the system and is emailed to the customer. The transaction is sent to the online payment processor, sometimes detouring through a 3rd party fraud check on the way. If the transaction is approved, the order will usually go into some kind of pending queue waiting for administrator approval. Once the administrator (you) approves the order with a click of the mouse, the domain registration gets sent to the registrar, the account gets provisioned on the server, based on the specs and quotas in the package ordered and finally the customer receives an email invoice marked paid, along with a welcome email containing the login and password for the account.
In the end, you have a complete, self-contained automated web hosting system that allows you the freedom to concentrate on marketing and growing your business without having to worry about repetitive and time consuming tasks such as provisioning accounts, setting up email accounts for clients, billing customers etc. If your goal is to grab your piece of the web hosting market pie, then be sure to find a host that can provide you with these kinds of automated services so you can concentrate on marketing your business and growing your own customer base.