Why You Shouldn`t Become a Web Host

So you’re dreaming of quitting your job and starting up your own web hosting business. You figure that it can’t be too hard, especially with reseller web hosting packages. Just lounge your way to easy street, right? Wrong.

Web hosting is a business, like any other, and the vast majority of businesses fail in their first year. It is not a way to fast, easy money. Don’t believe me? Do a little research for yourself. A recent article at Tech News World on choosing a web host pointed out that “many of the biggest [web hosting companies] filed for bankruptcy protection or were saved by being sold to some other company…” So if even the big guys have problems, how can it be easy for a little guy?

You’re probably thinking that little guys can be more agile, and besides, you don’t need to deal with the huge cost of overhead that is part of the burden of a large company. You therefore don’t need to make as much money as, say, GoDaddy. So surely you won’t have the same kinds of issues, right? Well, it’s true that when a problem increases in magnitude to that degree, its nature changes – but just because you’re not paying a salary to thousands of employees and rent on a corporate campus doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about what you’re paying yourself and one or two employees, to say nothing of the electric bill for your home office.

I don’t expect your dream of entrepreneurship will die an easy death, so I’m going to give you a list of reasons why shouldn’t become a web host, or at least rethink your decision. If you’ve read Matt Inglot’s article on the top five reasons not to become an entrepreneur, you’ll spot some parallels here. But web hosting has some special issues that can’t really be mentioned in a general article about being an entrepreneur, and I’m going to expand on those here.