Opening up a free hosting company

[oates151]

Hey guys, im opening up a free hosting company called Vistax.net

Anyone have any ideas of what services I should offer. I was thinking of free blog hosting, image hosting, cpanel hosting and forum hosting. Where should I start, and how much space do you think i'll need?

Anyone have any tips and scripts that will be helpful?

Thanks
-Pat

[[JSH]John]

Blog hosting, cPanel hosting and forum hosting are a good idea to start off with, image hosting will use a lot of bandwidth as I found out... Once you start image hosting you can't stop as you'll probably upset a lot of people and get yourself a bad name, if you have the bandwidth to do that sort of thing then go ahead and do it, it could be useful for users of your services so that they can easily upload an image then post it on their forums.

For space I think you're going to need a lot of it, maybe about 10GB+ to start off with? If you're successful then you'll probably need a dedicated server so a reseller or VPS would do for starting off then move onto a server if you can :)

[Keagle]

I have an ImageHost, and you have to be careful, you get lots of adult sites that eat up your bandwith.

[sellwhm]

To cut on abuse, I suggest you to limit your features and set limits. I suggest to open your free hosting services by offering no subdomains and allowing domains only. I suggest you aslo get a ad script so that your members can't abuse the ads by not putting them on there site.

[Dan]

To cut on abuse, I suggest you to limit your features and set limits. I suggest to open your free hosting services by offering no subdomains and allowing domains only. I suggest you aslo get a ad script so that your members can't abuse the ads by not putting them on there site.

I agree 100%

[James]

Good luck on this new service!

[jiehao85]

If you are going down the option of image hosting, I think you should go straight into VPS as a reseller got a lot less room for growth and image hosting is something that grows pretty fast. Also make sure you can get people willing to help you with keep abuse by adult websites at bay.

[stuffradio]

How much money do you have to spend? How much can you lose? You aren't going to make any money doing this. So unless you can afford to lose some money, in a few years you might start making some money through ads or something. good luck

[oates151]

You're right, I think ill stick to offering some free blog hosting and maybe forum hosting, that shouldn't be too hard and ill start requiring ads later on when I get more advanced with that.


How much money do you have to spend? How much can you lose? You aren't going to make any money doing this. So unless you can afford to lose some money, in a few years you might start making some money through ads or something. good luck