New business idea

dahac

I'm thinking of starting a web hosting business and I'm going to offer very low prices for 10 year deals. Has anyone got any pointers

Annisele

Is there a demand for ten year deals? I'd suspect most small business won't 100% sure what package they'll want next year, let alone in ten years' time. And if your business is new, how will your customers know you'll even be around in ten years?

motorguy

Annisele wrote: »

Is there a demand for ten year deals? I'd suspect most small business won't 100% sure what package they'll want next year, let alone in ten years' time. And if your business is new, how will your customers know you'll even be around in ten years?

+1

Those who are particularly savvy about web hosting prices will use one of the big players who will be cheaper anyway, and those who arent savvy are probably tied in with their website provider.

To get the volume required to make being the cheapest a viable business, you're going to need to attract a massive amount of customers too

dahac

Points taken on board. I have done abit of research and found some ways to attract customers which our hosting companies aren't doing. We are going to offer one package with full unlimited features for small fee.

podperson

Have to agree, would never want to tie the business into such a long commitment.
Also is it going to be cost-effective to you to tie yourself into offering a service, at I'm assuming the same price, for 10 years - what about inflation and your costs going up. In a few years you could be effectively making nothing on these customers.

paddyrg

I once signed up to a 'forever' deal from Brinkster which I hardly use any more. Frankly as hosting costs spiral downwards, 'forever' costs about the same as 5 years, so why not offer a 'forever' deal with all those opportunities to upsell?

dahac

Could be an ideal to offer a forever deal and then up sell to them

patman99

I have an unlimited hosting account. Costs me £30 p/a. Package includes website builder, emails, unlimited SQL databases, blogs, sub-domains etc.

dahac

I'm going offer unlimited features for 5 or 10 year packages for around that price so compared to this, I'm offering a cheap service as we will have low over heads.

paddyrg

Low overheads suggests low SLA, businesses need an SLA and will pay for it
Will you make enough selling unlimited goodness for £30 for 5 yrs to make it worth waking up in the morning? What if demand is 2 companies, and you have to give them the moon on a stick for 5 yrs for 25p/week?

dahac

I'm thinking of taking on commission only sales staff to sell the product. I'm thinking it will do well as everyone is trying to save money and it could b a great time to under cut the big players.