Cpanel Hosting – 1 Host Blog

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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.

The hosting reseller usually provides support to his own customers, although more and more hosting companies are offering the option of providing end-user support to the customers of resellers as well. This kind of control panel automation is absolutely necessary in terms of allowing a reseller and ultimately the host the freedom to to concentrate on marketing and sales, while at the same time empowering the end-user to perform many important tasks without needing assistance from the host.

The technical aspect of hosting can be a bit daunting at first, for those with no experience, so you may be best off to hire someone with some basic understanding of server administration and DNS if you don’t feel comfortable with this yourself. There are companies you can use to outsource your tech support needs to and many of them use an an automated web-based ticketing system such as Kayako E-Support. These types of setups will allow a seamless mix of outsourced and in-house support reps to work side by side, without alerting the end-user.

Finally there is the billing and provisioning end of things. There are a lot of well designed applications on the market tailored specifically to the needs of the web hosting industry, such as Modernbill and WHMCS. Systems like these will integrate with your server and control panel as well as with your domain registrar and online payment processor, such as Authorizenet or Paypal to give you a complete automated provisioning and billing system. Usually these systems have their own built-in order form as well, making the entire system truly automated. When a system like this is properly configured, someone interested in your services can view the different hosting plans offered on your website, sign up for the one he chooses, register a new domain name, fill out his contact and payment information and complete the process to sign up.

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.

What you ultimately have here is a complete, end-to-end automated web hosting solution that even operates at the reseller level. A system like this allows you to concentrate on the marketing and sales aspect of your business, allowing you to avoid having to spend valuable time on repetitive tasks like account provisioning, billing, setting up email accounts for clients and more. And it empowers your customers to help themselves without having to wait for your assistance. If you’re seriously considering jumping into the hosting business, be sure to find a web hosting company that can provide you with this level of automation to help you grow your business the right way.