how do you support your customers ?
- Thread starter aussie7
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phpAddict
Active Member
Fully managed hosting for the most part. Most of my clients I support locally, their systems and networks, and provide my web services as an added service, but I do also have some customers where I only host their websites (both managed and unmanaged). So in my case it depends on the client's needs, and I charge accordingly. For my managed I.T. clients and managed hosting customers they don't have to worry about a thing, I handle it all for them. Whereas my customers that are either hosting a 10 year old html website that hardly does anything or they know enough to cause minor issues, that I end up charging them for anyway, I more or less set it and forget it.
How do you plan to advertise? If you're considering trying to attract customers online for shared web hosting services, it is an extremely competitive market. You're basically competing with GoDaddy and the other big dogs that spend so much in online and other forms of advertising that they usually take a heavy loss with their average customer acquisition cost and later recoup it with their large amount of added services. Makes it nearly impossible to get yourself seen. Not to discourage you if that's what you were thinking of doing, just wanted to put it out there for you to consider. Most of the people here probably would agree and for the most part probably have local customers that would rather have someone nearby handle their I.T./web needs. So, advertise locally to start and focus on that being your strong suit. Knock on some business' doors even, introduce yourself as a local business owner that supports any and all of your web needs, listen to how your prospects respond to that and adjust both your approach and what you're offering to them. And, remember this, IMHO, if you see a prospect that appears to be needy or a potential problem causer, just get out and move on to the next. You can wind up hosting 10 customer's sites and never hear of a single issue, and that 1 problem customer just winds up constantly calling you, expects everything for next to nothing, or worse jumps ship because they had unreasonable expectations and is the type that writes bad reviews about your company.
Cheers, Good Luck, and We're always happy to support each other here on the KH forums.
How do you plan to advertise? If you're considering trying to attract customers online for shared web hosting services, it is an extremely competitive market. You're basically competing with GoDaddy and the other big dogs that spend so much in online and other forms of advertising that they usually take a heavy loss with their average customer acquisition cost and later recoup it with their large amount of added services. Makes it nearly impossible to get yourself seen. Not to discourage you if that's what you were thinking of doing, just wanted to put it out there for you to consider. Most of the people here probably would agree and for the most part probably have local customers that would rather have someone nearby handle their I.T./web needs. So, advertise locally to start and focus on that being your strong suit. Knock on some business' doors even, introduce yourself as a local business owner that supports any and all of your web needs, listen to how your prospects respond to that and adjust both your approach and what you're offering to them. And, remember this, IMHO, if you see a prospect that appears to be needy or a potential problem causer, just get out and move on to the next. You can wind up hosting 10 customer's sites and never hear of a single issue, and that 1 problem customer just winds up constantly calling you, expects everything for next to nothing, or worse jumps ship because they had unreasonable expectations and is the type that writes bad reviews about your company.
Cheers, Good Luck, and We're always happy to support each other here on the KH forums.
Fully managed hosting for the most part. Most of my clients I support locally, their systems and networks, and provide my web services as an added service, but I do also have some customers where I only host their websites (both managed and unmanaged). So in my case it depends on the client's needs, and I charge accordingly. For my managed I.T. clients and managed hosting customers they don't have to worry about a thing, I handle it all for them. Whereas my customers that are either hosting a 10 year old html website that hardly does anything or they know enough to cause minor issues, that I end up charging them for anyway, I more or less set it and forget it.
How do you plan to advertise? If you're considering trying to attract customers online for shared web hosting services, it is an extremely competitive market. You're basically competing with GoDaddy and the other big dogs that spend so much in online and other forms of advertising that they usually take a heavy loss with their average customer acquisition cost and later recoup it with their large amount of added services. Makes it nearly impossible to get yourself seen. Not to discourage you if that's what you were thinking of doing, just wanted to put it out there for you to consider. Most of the people here probably would agree and for the most part probably have local customers that would rather have someone nearby handle their I.T./web needs. So, advertise locally to start and focus on that being your strong suit. Knock on some business' doors even, introduce yourself as a local business owner that supports any and all of your web needs, listen to how your prospects respond to that and adjust both your approach and what you're offering to them. And, remember this, IMHO, if you see a prospect that appears to be needy or a potential problem causer, just get out and move on to the next. You can wind up hosting 10 customer's sites and never hear of a single issue, and that 1 problem customer just winds up constantly calling you, expects everything for next to nothing, or worse jumps ship because they had unreasonable expectations and is the type that writes bad reviews about your company.
Cheers, Good Luck, and We're always happy to support each other here on the KH forums.
Thanks, phpAddict
Some very useful info, I was planing to offer some free or cheap hosting to my fellow uni students with limited support via email or a forum. I'm not sure how to advertise, was thinking word of mouth or uni noticeboard. I want to do this to gain some experience and learn something. I understand it is a cut throat industry and for this reason I won't be offering my hosting to the general public.
Michael