Offering free subdomains & emails - Help needed

[DomainEmpire]

Hi All,

Firstly, I admit we've all to learn about web hosting in general, we're newbies looking for a "good teacher"
We're posting this request in multiple forums to collect as much data and feedbacks as possible, before starting this new ventre and, obviously, we thank in advance anyone who'll add his contribution to our thread.

We're looking for help to find the best way to setup the following project: we need to offer free hosted subdomains to our users (username.myname.com), free
email address username@myname.com and a good suite of preinstalled scripts for all their needs.
Briefly, when an user sign up and pick up a subdomain (hischosenname.myname.com), where myname.com is our main domain, he should get also the email
address hischosenname@myname.com (pop3 & webmail), ftp and file manager + other tools still to discuss.
We'll need a small advertising space at the top of all hosted subdomains and a panel to remotely add/remove small banners.

We need a detailed advice about the right server to rent, necessary software, average costs to realize the full project.
Obviously, if someone should have an interesting detailed solutoin to propose, we're also looking for paid help to setup it so we're ready to start evaluating quotes.

If you've the necessary experience and knowledge to help us, please, contact me by email or messenger:
AIM: dnempiregroup - ICQ: 36734254 - MSN: domainempire@live.com - YAHOO: domainempire
Email: domainsales (at) domainempire.com

[wswd]

Hi,

cPanel, WHMCS, and Softaculous will do exactly what you want to do, aside from the advertising space. There are really no good solutions out there (outside of custom scripts) for placing ads on user pages. Do a search here and you might find some (i.e. iPanel), but they are largely buggy and unsupported.

As far as the right server, how many free accounts (I'm guessing you're getting into the free hosting business) do you plan to provide? For starts, a reseller account (be careful, as many hosts do not allow their resellers to operate free hosts, as they are normally far more prone to abuse) or VPS might work, with a dedicated server after your host starts to grow.

A good reseller account will probably run you $10 and up, a VPS slightly more than that, and a good dedicated server $150+. Of course you also have to factor in the license costs. Softaculous, cPanel, and WHMCS all cost money.