Google and HOSTING

[sivvaa]

Dear all,

For the past few days, this is really concerning me a lot.

GOOGLE's HOSTED solution for EMAIL google.com/hosted/

They are making inroads slowly towards DOMAIN REGISTRATION and HOSTING.

Please advice your thoughts on this and the FUTURE of resellers/hosting companies like us..

Rgds

Siva

[suki]

IMO if you are worrying then this business is not for you. If you looking at this sort of thing as a wake up call and already have a plan or will develop a plan that will differentiate you from these sorts of companies then you have a chance.

Their always will be and are companies like this - ie yahoo etc that offer 5GB or I saw a few companies that now offer 15GB of disk space - knowing well that maybe 1 in a thousand customers will fill that space, and we all do oversell nowadays - but some of these companies do it to an extreme, I think.

Plus from experience I know that you probably don't want the customers that come to you because you are the cheapest as those are the kinds of people that also leave fast too as soon as a new company comes around or will bitch about the other company being $1 dollar cheaper than you and are usually more hassle than they are worth and I say if Google, yahoo etc want them then good for them.

Bottom line, if you are competing on disk space/price alone then you can't win but if you have a track record, have good service, have value added applications then you have nothing to worry about and the hosting business should and will be profitable for many years to come.

You have to remember that hosting is a relative new industry and things are still being played out and at the end of the day like moist industries, their will still be the big boys and then smaller companies that deal with their local area and also niche players that have something different. Many small business in smaller towns and cities dread when Walmart comes, thinking it’s the end of them – but what happens is that there are still grocery stores, small and large and people that are either closer to them for them or are specialized stores that you just can’t get the products at Walmart or want to consult with someone you know instead of a young stranger.

The future as I see it is small to medium sized hosting companies, like most of Vortech's client base, and these companies will probably have some or all of the following strategies:

1. Geography - they will be competing primarily within their local geographical market and maybe a few states around them, they may have clients in other areas of the country from referrals or what have you but they will probably be few and spread out.

2. Service – local service the big companies cannot to do this and many clients want local service, they don’t want a toll free number or email only support.

3. Specialization - add on services and applications is where the real growth is - hosting is good and easy but if you have a product or service that is packaged as part of the hosting, you end up selling the same hosting space for the same amount to anywhere as much as 10 times as much as a standard - and those customers that relay on your products or services stick with you for a very long time.

There are probably other reasons too – but just my 2c worth.

[sivvaa]

Suki,

Iam extremely pleased to hear a detailed reply on this topic.

My mind is clear now !

Iam ready to face any challenge !

But what bothered me a lot is, they offer services FREE of CHARGE !

I would also love to hear from many more people like you on this

thanks
SIva

[maytricks]

This has been going on everywhere for a long while, crap, even vortech offers plans with 50GB transfer and 5GB space for $6.50 a month. Kind of makes us resellers look like a joke to most. Most of my accounts are part of a web design package, I rarely get a stand alone hosting signup anymore.

[suki]

Originally Posted by maytricks

This has been going on everywhere for a long while, crap, even vortech offers plans with 50GB transfer and 5GB space for $6.50 a month. Kind of makes us resellers look like a joke to most. Most of my accounts are part of a web design package, I rarely get a stand alone hosting signup anymore.

Stand alone hosting still works, we get many accounts and find its more about marketing.
Showing them, that you are a good choice and asking them simply how many pages they have and most sites are maybe 20 or less pages and if they have no audio or video then usually you’re looking at 10/15MB tops that’s all and once they understand that, they also stop comparing disk space etc