If you're reading this, I can already assume you have quite a bit of interest in the web hosting industry -- either you're already running a successful (or at least active) hosting company and are looking for tips to improve your business, or are thinking of getting into the industry at some level. If you're in the first category -- i.e. you already have a hosting company, you can probably skip most of the preliminary sections. If you are fresh to this industry, you probably should read on.

Actually, that leads to one of the first lessons about web hosting: shortcuts will usually lead to short changing -- what I mean is, if you take a shortcut approach to running your hosting company, it's probably going to come back to haunt you. There are a few exceptions, most of which are discussed in this book.

You're probably wondering a bit about me. Here's what I can tell you: I've done a lot of work as a hosting company consultant, helping build (and build up) many web hosting companies ranging from big to small from young to old from rich to poor from literally all over the world. Because I'm subject to NDAs and the like, I can't name most of them, but I can assure you that they're names that are definitely recognizable both within the industry and elsewhere.

Perhaps the next most obvious question is: why would you create this lens? In one sense, I do admit it's counter-intuitive given my own business interests. But, I think if people know the realities of the industry (and they can be harsh), they can make up their own minds if they really want to pursue the path of web hosting entrepreneur. And, I like to think of this as a bit of an experiment, too -- an exploration of what happens if some relatively good advice is available for free to start-up web hosts (and the established ones, too!). So, you can rejoice in your good fortune if you like!

I'm going to blunt with you right up front -- there are a lot of really not-so-smart people in the web hosting industry. You will notice this no matter where you go in the industry, and if that's not the sort of thing you can tolerate, you should honestly give up now. There are lots of other industries where people are (in theory at least) smarter, kinder, and better able to communicate. And, if it's broad intellect that you're looking for, maybe a career in academia is better for you.

As for the giving up part, I really do mean that -- and not simply if you're looking at starting your own hosting company. The same applies if you want to work in the industry in any number of capacities, including as a support tech or as a site designer or as a programmer or even as a writer. You will inevitably have to deal with a lot of difficulties -- sometimes heaps of it -- even from companies or people who appear to be well-established. If you can deal with that, read on!

Running a web hosting company (with a few exceptions that I discuss below) often entails a lot of commitment. Just the expectations alone from a typical hosting customer can be very, very high -- particularly if you're offering web hosting that's intended for businesses, and even more so if you're offering hosting for businesses doing business (i.e. selling products) through the web. Here's a few things you can probably expect, particularly if you're a one-person hosting shop:

- Phone calls from clients at the most ungodly hours possible, leading to quite a few hours of lost sleep. Keep in mind they expect you to be at your friendliest whenever they call, no matter what you may happen to be doing at the time.

- Clients getting mean, nasty, and even claiming you've caused them to be admitted to the hospital if your web hosting doesn't work perfectly. They'll sometimes swear at you, call you names, or even threaten to sue you.

- A lot of hard work in growing a client base. If you're smart about this, it can take a lot less effort, but some people are just stubborn and do things the hard way. That path is a lot slower.

- Often some of the most insane technical questions you can imagine (or worse). What's even more, shall I say, amusing, are potential customers who want to debate the technical merits of Linux kernel development and mail transport protocols. That's no joke -- I've seen it with my own two eyes.

- Quite a few fradulent transactions. This includes people who will try to convince you that their name consists of food products. No, I am not kidding here either -- I've seen that, too.

- People who expect you to practically gave away your services for nothing (or less). Some of them fit into the mean people category above. Some are just plain annoying. Most of them could care less what your profit margins are.

- All the stresses that come from having to juggle a variety of business relationships. Virtually nobody in this industry avoids this to any significant degree -- not the smallest host with zero customers, and not the biggest hosts out there.

- Again with a few exceptions, it *does* cost money to get into the hosting industry. That said, I've seen some particularly creative (or at least open-minded) people launch successful hosting companies on a shoestring, but to be brutally honest, that's a rather large exception rather than the rule. As an aside, I don't think this fact should be at all startling -- considering that even when things are done well, it can take some time to build up a solid client base.

- A lot of hosting company owners don't draw much salary at all. Again, this isn't necessarily a lot different than any business in the beginning months (and sometimes years) -- it's often the case that it's wise to reinvest profits into building upon and expanding the business.

- And so on and so forth.

To be quite honest with you all, it is the combination of those things that led me to enter the consulting side of the industry rather than actually running my own hosting company. I don't think there is anything wrong with that (quite the contrary -- if you're not up to the challenge, you shouldn't be running a hosting company). Indeed, there are a range of careers in the hosting industry, some of which can both pay quite well and keep you at least somewhat distant from the day-to-day stresses of actually running the company you happen to be working for. And, yes, consulting is one of those things, provided you know your stuff.

Keep in mind though that over the long-term, the bigger rewards are probably there for the owners, rather than the employees -- you may get sort of rich working for web hosting companies, but the only way to get really rich in this industry is owning one. All that said, if it's excitement and unpredictability you seek, the hosting industry certainly can deliver again and again and again!

On the premise that one shouldn't assume anything, it's probably necessary to stress the importance of one who is interested in starting a web hosting company actually learning more about the industry in general. If you're looking for the absolute basics -- I'm sure Google and Wikipedia would definitely be your on-line friend here. In terms of getting a better idea of the day-to-day operations of a web hosting company though, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Probably the main starting point for getting a feel for the hosting industry would be in some of the popular web hosting industry on-line forums. The largest is Web Hosting Talk at www.webhostingtalk.com , which is truly international in scope. Quite a few other forums exist. HostingDiscussion.com is one, HHO is another. Internationally, Canucks visit sites such as Hosting Industry Discussion while Aussies frequent Web Hosting Talk Australia. There are of course a variety of other forums of the same type; just use Google with search terms such as "web hosting forums" or "web hosting forums ".

There are of course other resources for learning more about the hosting industry. One is the industry's main magazine, and my former employer -- available in print and electronic versions -- Ping! Zine. Day-by-day news is presented by the likes of the Web Hosting Industry Review. Many blogs on the hosting industry also exist -- perhaps the most famous is that of Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com available at www.bobparsons.com. For those more into the audio side of things, a colleague of mine, Mitch Keeler, runs The Web Hosting Show -- by far the most famous (actually probably one of the only!) podcasts specifically about the hosting industry. That podcast has its website at www.webhostingshow.com.

In terms of books about the hosting industry generally, to be honest, I haven't seen any that I would recommend. This is an industry that tends to move very quickly in some respects, and you can learn far more by listening to podcasts, reading blogs, following (and participating) in forum discussions, and reading things like Ping! Zine than you probably ever could from some kind of formal treatment on the matter. That said, don't think that learning about the industry isn't important -- quite the contrary, I think a good understanding of both hosting companies and hosting customers is absolutely critical to being successful.

Usually, the next logical step in starting a hosting company is deciding on an actual structure for your business -- and exactly what that means largely depends on where you live and/or where your business operates. Generally, there is a distinction between proprietorships (usually businesses operated under a business name but effectively controlled by a single person, who is the underlying responsible legal entity) and corporations (where the company is a legal entity in and of itself). Virtually every state and province has its own rules (and sometimes its own naming convention) regarding that sort of thing. It is certainly something critical to review. Fortunately, there *are* good resources on that (and running a business generally).

For Americans, there are a few options. As amusing as the titles may be, there a couple of books below that are excellent resources. You can pick them up relatively cheaply from Amazon, and most larger bookstores. Another great starting point is one you've already paid for as a taxpayer -- the United States Small Business Administration website.

For Canadians, the same book is recommended in its Canadian version, and amazingly enough, there is even a cousin to the American Small Business Kit entitled Canadian Small Business Kit for Dummies. In terms of government resources, Strategis is a good place to start for Canadians, too. Keep in mind that most states and provinces have their own business sites too, which often help answer questions about what is needed in terms of legal registration, etc., to start a company. And, don't forget that city/town/village governments also often have business regulations -- you very well may need a business license from them to legally operate your hosting company.

Incorporation is something worth discussing in a bit more depth. In most places, incorporating a company turns your company into a legal entity of its own -- effectively detached from you as a person. In theory (although not always in practice), this could, for example, keep you from going bankrupt personally if your company does. You ought to be very careful here, though -- a lot of companies advertise the ability to offer ultra-cheap incorporation services and the like, but usually don't have any substantial reputation to help ensure you're actually getting what you pay for. Often the best bet here, despite the cost, is to talk to a lawyer or attorney who specializes in business law. It can save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Accounting is another area that you will of course need to consider carefully. In many cases, it makes sense to set up a business account and use formal accounting software to manage your company's books. Although that may not be necessary if you're just starting small, keep in mind that there may be government regulations and the like in your jurisdiction that require you to create and maintain good records of all of your transactions for purposes such as taxation. And, if you have to pay things like sales taxes, having good records becomes absolutely critical.

The related point is that good accounting records generally lead to good access to information on tracking how your company is doing. Although some billing systems can help you track things like client growth, revenue growth, etc., not all billing systems do that. Ensuring that you're profitable (or at least on track to being profitable) is a fundamental aspect of keeping a business alive. As silly as it may seem to mention, some people simply don't realize that even with huge numbers of clients, you can still be slowly (or quickly) running your business into bankruptcy.

It's important to realize that in almost any business, there can be legal issues. This is something that can even affect small hosting providers, so it's best to be aware of some of the possible issues you may face. Here's a quick run down of common events in the hosting industry that may require you to get professional legal advice and/or assistance:

- Copyright infringement - for example, if a hosting client starts running an MP3 or Video site without permission to copy the music or videos in question, the owners of the legal rights to that may demand that you take the infringing content down (or worse).

- Court orders - for example, in defamation (i.e. "libel" or "slander") actions, sometimes a court can order that offending web site content be removed from the internet. If you are hosting such content, you may be required to take things down.

- Criminal proceedings - certain types of content are illegal in certain jurisdictions. One can run afoul of the law by hosting such content or enabling such content to be hosted. For example, such a scenario would likely apply to Phishing schemes. Ditto, in some cases, for those who engage in spamming.

- And quite a few other scenarios.

Perhaps the one good thing about this is that, for the most part at least, the responsibility (initially) ends up with the person hosting the content, and not necessarily the hosting provider. This leads to an extremely important point: well-constructed Terms of Service -- i.e. the document/contract that hosting clients agree to as a condition of using your hosting services -- can be critical in ensuring that you can act on legal demands without needing to worry as much about possible counter-claims. At the end of the day, though, you should always, always have a legal contingency plan. It's not particularly expensive (in some cases free) to have an initial appointment with a lawyer/attorney who you can turn to in times of needing legal assistance or advice.

Although it's always advisable to turn to proper legal advice when drafting things like contracts and Terms of Service, some people have had some success in using relatively generic templates for such things (and then having a lawyer review those); this is generally a far less expensive method than having a lawyer draft something for you, and can still ensure you're well protected, with documents that are legally binding in your area. Perhaps the most famous of companies that provide these types of templates are HostLegal. They have a fairly good reputation in the industry. Although there are likely other companies out there offering such services, you should always exercise caution. At the very least, you should strive to obtain documents that have been prepared or reviewed already by a lawyer.

One additional shortcut that is sometimes acceptable -- if you do this though, *please* ask permission first -- is to simply utilize your hosting supplier's Terms of Service. These are generally quite well-drafted, but of course the same issues apply in terms of applicability to local law. As with anything of a legal nature, it's always the best practice to have things checked by a lawyer *before* problems occur.

It is also advisable that you do a bit of research into Privacy laws in your jurisdiction. Although privacy legislation sometimes only applies to larger organizations, there are often basic requirements that apply to all companies in a specific location (i.e. state/province/country). Generally, though, the requirements for privacy practices involve protecting personal information your clients (and even potential clients) share with you, using it only for the purposes for which it was provided to you, and ensuring third parties who may work with you also protect that information. A lot of it is really a matter of common sense. Some companies (sometimes by requirement, sometimes because they're nice) will publish a formal Privacy Policy indicating what steps they take on protecting privacy of their clients and those who contact them. This can sometimes be advisable even for a startup host, even if it's not a legal requirement, as it portrays a very positive approach to potential clients.

Of course, if you intend on having a hosting company, you're going to want to have a web presence. There are quite a few options here:

If you have web design skills, you can design your own site. To be quite harsh, though, most people -- even those who think they do have good web design skills -- really don't. In a market where professional appearance can truly make a huge difference in terms of sales, you often shouldn't risk developing your own website.

There are mainstream template sites out there as well. Open Source Web Design provides free designs galore. Template Monster offers a variety of relatively inexpensive (and often nicely designed) layouts as well. Sometimes, though, your site can recognized as not being entirely unique, particularly if you go with a freely-available template. That said, this is often the most cost effective solution.

The next solution is to check out templates for sale on places like Web Hosting Talk and the Marketplace on Sitepoint. These are often similarly priced to something you would see on Template Monster -- but the downside is the that sometimes those creating templates don't put a lot of effort into their designs. That said, if you have some time to spare, it's worth a look.

The best option, but also the most expensive, tends to be to hire a private designer to create a custom web design. Quality and pricing varies greatly -- but for a good, basic design, you should reasonably expect to pay about $1000-$1500 USD. If you can get a good design for less, kudos to you! One interesting resource that I ran across very recently involves "crowdsourcing." Although I have never utilized the site, 99designs seems to be the premiere site in this category, and may very well provide you with a high-quality website at a lower-than-normal price.

As an aside, if you're looking for a nice brandable logo, LogoWorks, although a bit expensive for some tastes, has an exceptionally high level of quality. They also offer custom design services, making it possible to get a unique design (and logo) at a very high level of quality, often for less than you would pay at a freelance shop.

As should be really obvious though, no web hosting company website is any good without content. Again, I know we're not all writers. I've always recommended that any hosting company I work with should actually go out and hire a professional copywriter -- and not just anyone, but one that has some grasp of marketing in this industry. This is actually one of the areas in which my own company works. If you'd like more information on my services in that regard, please feel free to contact me.

I also know, though, that some of you won't listen and will write up the content yourself or have a non-professional do that. If you go that route, be aware of the following:

- If you can't write yourself, please get someone else to do it. This may be harsh, but if you have no skill here, nobody really wants to read your gibberish. It will annoy them. It will upset them. You will lose sales, plain and simple.

- Make sure things are spelled correctly, and the grammar is at least reasonably sound. Although not everyone resembles certain Seinfeld characters, good spelling and decent grammar are two cornerstones to a professional appearance on the web.

- Do not have so much text that people can't understand what you're actually selling. I can't count the number of hosting providers who think it's a good thing to pack the front page (and even every subsequent page) which massive lists of features, guarantees, money-back offers, random musings and huge quantities of other miscellaneous, pointless text. If you're not a skilled writer -- i.e. not a professional -- don't go for lengthy, flowery text. Be succinct. Be terse. Make your point and then stop.

Now, I know you wouldn't be happy if I didn't give you some more tips on what to actually write and how to actually present it. So, here goes (keeping in mind this is a fairly rough template):

- On your front page, provide a simple introduction to your services. Do show off your best or most valuable hosting product, if there is one. Don't break the rules listed above.

- Also make sure you have an appropriate pricing page or pages for your products. Make it clear what is generally included in the "main" areas -- bandwidth and storage space for virtual hosting, those plus total accounts for reseller, and core features (RAM/CPU/etc.) for VPS and Dedicated. Also indicate what control panel you'll be offering.

- Contact information is very important. I would honestly say you're going to gain big points if there is an actual telephone contact point for you (that isn't your home phone -- use a dedicated line if you're doing that). Tip: create "departments" for e-mail addresses, such as sales, support, billing, etc., even if all the inquiries go to one place or to one person. This is good both for perception, but also helps with organizing incoming e-mail.

- Payment information is important too -- potential clients ought to be clear on what payment methods you accept, and even perhaps a link to your terms on non-payment (i.e. are accounts suspended, etc.)

- Guarantees, in terms of uptime and money-back-if-not-satisfied are quite common. Often, this is good content for a side bar.

- Terms of Service are probably one of the most critical things you can have on your site. I have discussed their importance above.

- Privacy policies should also be on your website, if you have a privacy policy.

- Some hosting providers choose to provide easy links/some content to do with their helpdesk and support offerings. That's not a bad idea, either.

- With "About Us" text you need to be careful, and in some cases, I would honestly recommend not doing this at all. It's a challenge (best left to an experienced copywriter) to figure out a way of succinctly stating what you do without making it blatantly obvious you're a brand new business. That said, if you have experience in other areas related to information technology and the internet, that can be something to focus on. Remember the point is to provide your clients with evidence that you're reliable. And, remember, you're expected to deliver on that (so don't make claims you can't live up to -- it won't fool anyone for long, and is a bad way of running a business).

In most cases, you will also want to actually make money off of web hosting (big revelation, huh?) -- or at least directly from it. Before I get into the technical side of that, I will say that there have been a few hosting providers who have, through one scheme or another, made themselves some acceptable revenue (enough to scratch out some sort of existence at least) based off of free hosting. The catch there is that you need to have some other way of getting revenue -- maybe it's making users put ads on their site, maybe it's something else -- unless of course you're running a charity hosting establishment and actually have some source of funds to pay for the underlying technology. If you're looking to go the direct route -- i.e. people subscribing to services and paying a certain amount of money each month, you will need to deal with some kind of billing system.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that some hosting providers get away with doing everything via PayPal and PayPal Subscriptions. Here's my opinion though -- as nice as PayPal is, and as big as it is, some people think it's a bit "amateur" -- i.e. you can end up looking like someone who sells on eBay now and then, rather than someone who is running a professional hosting gig. The exception, I suppose, is if you're offering web hosting services in addition to professional services like web design -- in that scenario, your clients may actually be used to paying you via PayPal, and wouldn't really think a whole lot of you using it as your primary payment method.

Moreover, without any sort of structured program or application to help you out, you'd be looking at doing a lot of your billing manually. That may be fine if you only have a few clients, but it can get pretty nasty if they start to pile up. The best solution there is to seek out an actual billing/accounting system that is designed for hosting and other internet service providers.

But, before you happily proclaim that there is software out there that may be able to solve all your billing problems, you should know that a lot of people are of the impression that what's out there for web hosting companies tends to be mediocre in quality. Totally personal opinion here -- but from the billing systems I've sometimes worked with in my clients' firms, I have to agree.

This said, there is basically a "standard" in the industry -- in terms of the product with the largest market share -- and it is used by many web hosts very successfully. The product in question is ModernGigabyte's ModernBill. The cool part, at least, is that although you can stick with something like PayPal as your payment system, you can use something a bit more "grown-up" for accepting credit card payments from your customers (and something that's not likely to be perceived as amateurish). For example, BluePay, Authorize.net, PSIGate, ProTX, WorldPay, and a ton of other on-line merchant account services all have modules that integrate into ModernBill. If you have a merchant account with any of those companies, in theory at least, you can use them with ModernBill, and in turn use that to automate your billing processes.

Obviously the next major step once you have a hosting company is to obtain clients. Some people take an approach that avoids this entirely -- they merely acquire clients by "purchasing" them from other hosting companies who, for whatever reason (generally business closure) no longer wish to or are no longer able to provide hosting services. Sometimes it's even possible to acquire entire hosting companies -- which often means that you can avoid a lot of the pitfalls and work I have discussed above.

Now, at first, this may seem like a great approach -- you can pick up a ton of customers, sometimes get an established brand, and start raking in the cash from providing hosting. But I must urge caution, for a few reasons:

- First, prices can tend to be high for hosting clients -- those selling hosting clients often expect to receive twelve months (or more) of revenue for those clients. And, sometimes they receive that. If you're confident you can keep those clients that long, this may still be a good deal, however you should be cautious.

- Second, some people don't take very kindly to being moved to other hosting providers. That's not so much an issue sometimes when it comes to buying an entire hosting company, but even then, people can get used to a company's current management and style -- something you may very well be changing as the "new kid on the block." For this reason, you should anticipate a fairly high rate of losses. It's not necessarily unreasonable to expect 30-40% losses over the span of a year of transferred clients. You can mitigate this somewhat if you work hard to make transferred clients happy -- the best way to do that is to be up front and open about your company, services, and the acquisition.

- Third, if the clients you acquire are using hosting platforms that aren't close matches with your own, there are often many extra costs. For example, if you're a cPanel-oriented host offering Linux services, you're going to need to consider additional investments in server technologies and control panel licensing to support, for example, Plesk-based Windows hosting.

- Fourth, you should always try to do your best assessment of the relative level of happiness among the clients you are looking to acquire. If possible, speak to a few of them to get their views on the service they've received, and their opinions on hosting with another company.

A very important decision in starting a hosting company involves determining what type of hosting you wish to provide, and what platform you are going to use to provide that hosting. There are of course many options, but we can quite effectively cover the most common ones here.

The first hosting option also happens to be the most inexpensive, but can be very well suited to individuals who wish to offer shared or "virtual" hosting. This option is to purchase "Reseller" hosting from another hosting provider. Typically, a Reseller account will allow you a certain quantity of storage space and bandwidth as well as a reseller "control panel" that you can use to allocate those resources to specific hosting clients, activate/deactivate/create accounts, and so on. Keep in mind there is a lot of variance here in terms of rules pertaining to accounts -- many reseller accounts limit the total number of shared/virtual hosting accounts you can create, and some resellers allow "overselling" (i.e. you can allocate more resources than you actually have on the theory that not everyone will reach their account limits), to cite two examples.

In terms of reseller control panels, the two most popular are generally cPanel/WHM and Plesk. For beginners, most tend to think that cPanel/WHM is among the simplest of control panels. I would have to agree somewhat with this; it's my view that those with some level of computer experience should be able to navigate and utilize cPanel/WHM a little more easily than Plesk. The other cool thing here is that most of these control panels "scale up" and are very often used on VPS and Dedicated platforms. The advantage in that scenario is that not only can you manage accounts, but you can also manage things like mail queues, daemons / network services, DNS settings, and so on, without having to have intimate knowledge of the underlying operating system.

This leads to another critical decision: what OS are you going to base your hosting on? The most common (and generally most flexible) hosting platforms are those based on Linux. However, some clients require things specific only to Windows. That said, if you want to cater to both types of customers, it can often be as simple as obtaining two reseller accounts -- one Linux-based, and one Windows-based. In the case of Windows, though, keep in mind that services like MS SQL Server database support tend to incur additional (sometimes quite significant fees) on top of the base reseller price; that usually is not the case with common Linux applications, which tend to be freely available (open source). As an aside, most web hosting is based off of Linux.

In terms of picking a supplier, the same rules tend to apply across the board -- no matter if you're looking for reseller, VPS, Dedicated or Grid hosting. This is where it gets simple -- I'm of the strong view that price should be fairly low on the list of priorities, and reliability followed by support quality should be the main factors in making a decision for who you use as a supplier. The reasons for this are very simple: high quality hosting is less likely to lead to trouble that will affect your customers. High quality support gives you a resource to turn to when problems or difficulties do occur. Although issues with hosting are really inevitable, you do have control over the frequency of those issues and the response to those issues, simply by picking a quality supplier.

Although the traditional step up from reseller hosting has long been dedicated hosting (i.e. your own server), in recent years a solid middleground has emerged, called Virtual Private Servers (or, with some suppliers, Virtual Dedicated Servers). Essentially, this scenario takes a dedicated server and places specialized software on it which compartmentalizes that server into individual, smaller, "Virtual" Private/Dedicated servers. Honestly, it's very difficult to dismiss this option -- and I would personally favor it as a low-cost starting point for someone just entering the industry. Security is excellent, issues with other clients on the same machine as you are not as likely to be an issue (as they can be with Reseller hosting), and you have full control over the hosting environment. Like resller and dedicated solutions, these of course also almost always come equipped with control panels. Moreover, most VPS setups are burstable -- so if there are free CPU and RAM resources on the dedicated server node, you will be able to utilize those resources temporarily, even if that would exceed the resources you are allocated under your VPS account.

Of course, for those who have more clients and/or the need for more processing power in their hosting solution, a dedicated server is the solution. Here things tend to get a bit more complex -- typically, when purchasing dedicated server hosting, there is a very wide range of configuration options, and in turn, a very wide range of prices. In terms of ensuring reliability, however, you should try and find a hosting platform that offers the following, in approximate order of priority:

- Hardware RAID. This helps ensure better performance and stronger reliability, by using additional hard drives in a certain way (a>). RAID 10 is generally the best choice, but RAID 1 and RAID 5 also provide some measure of good reliability, too.

- Premium Hard Disks. Base configurations at most dedicated hosting providers often use slower (and less reliable) drive technologies. Although hard disks are generally built quite well nowadays, "enterprise grade" drives are generally a better solution in hosting environments; generally the distinction will be obvious in price and terminology (SATA tends to be slower than SAS or SCSI drives), but always be sure to verify that your dedicated hosting provider's driver technologies are "enterprise grade".

- Processors / RAM. It's fairly obvious, but you should try to get as many (and as fast) processors as you can afford, and ample quantities of RAM. Dual (or Quad) processor systems tend to work very well in a hosting environment.

- Bandwidth. In most cases, if you have an option, you will want to go with a fixed quantity of bandwidth rather than a dedicated pipe and "unmetered" bandwidth. The reason for this is that if you are using a fixed quantity of bandwidth, the total data throughput out of your server will be able to "burst" under occasions of high demand without having server-wide network performance issues under higher traffic conditions.

Additional information on starting and maintaining a hosting company will be available soon! (Alas, I need to do a bit more editing!)