$20 REWARD - Minecraft Hosting Providers

[MaximC]

Hi there.

In the near future, a group of us are starting a hosting provider, first specialising in Minecraft.

To ensure we provide the best service as possible, please comment below annoying issues you've had with hosting providers, or features which convinced you to purchase their services. (apart from low cost and fast servers)

The best response will get $20 USD, let me know what your throughs are.

 

[MaximC]

Hosting providers now all provide the same thing. I won’t lie, there is no way you can offer something that for example PebbleHost or Mixml can’t.

As a business student now & a ex hosting provider. I’ve seen what I did wrong and what I did right. Having a USP (Unique selling point) is something I did terribly wrong. If you want to start out just with hosting mc servers. Find something that no one is offering & capitalise off it. Like I said every host will offer the same thing (locations, prices, panel features, support) and while some may be worse than others. It’s still the same. For me personally, The only advice or thing I can comment is this:

What you want your host to offer, will already be offered somewhere else at a lower price. Try and find something new to offer & market that. Do atleast 3 months of first & second hand research into the hosting scene and try and find something people want which other places don’t offer. Doing that can help your growth. But make sure to copyright it or license it into your name or the businesses name. As other places ARE GUARANTEED TO STEAL IT. Also look at who takes the most market share in the mc hosting scene. Then look at how they operate & try and influence yourself to operate better than they do. Also gain experience. Since you said you and a couple friends are trying to open a hosting company. Reach out to some of the bigger hosting companies, ask if they are in need of any support staff to help out FOR FREE (If you don’t understand why you should work for free, watch Devin Nash’s video on it. You will understand then). Lastly, don’t be afraid or scared of failure. It happens to the best of people, the most richest man in the world currently started off in a garage, now look where he is. He almost closed his business down due to being scared to fail. Also Timing is everything, some months might see you at a loss, some months might see you in a profit. If you operate for a long time & get customers to support you and your business on this forum, other forums & TrustPilot, potential customers will see these reviews and your replies and see if your business is a place they want to operate a server out of. SIDE NOTE - If you get any negative reviews, don’t try and fight it unless it’s blatantly a lie. Apologise, learn and fix the errors they had. Remember your customers will be the eyes and ears for bugs, errors or problems. It’s important to listen to them.

But best of luck with starting a hosting company! Hope to see it rise to the top

Hey there, Kuo.

Firstly, thank you very much for your message - very good points and an extremely unique message! We've been doing a lot of research into the hosting market, trying to analyse what people want, what issues they come across and what hosting providers fail at achieving.

Of course its inherently difficult to provide a service which is incredibly unique, as the hosting sector is a niche market. However, we are introducing aspects which we believe are different from the rest. We also believe that some providers overlook the basics, such as support (responsiveness and helpfulness) and quality of the server at hand. This will not be a rushed project and we won't be cramming as many people as we can onto an i7.

We're currently in the planning process of some very exciting ideas and we hope to share them with MCM very soon.

~ Maxim.

 

[MaximC]

Man, there was this one website where if you didn't have a dedicated IP already when you first made the server, you had to contact support and wait for them it was just annoying.

That most definitely will not be an issue with us hahahah!

 

[MaximC]

REDACTED

Hey there,

The struggles of IPv4s are very very annoying! We do indeed have a solution in place (hopefully it works haha!) in regards to dedicated IP addresses.

 

[SftpClient]

Overselling.

 

[syrusxd]

My worst experiences were with hosts having internet or machine issues causing the server to have major performance issues. One of the best things about the same host was their excellent support and personal connection with clients which made it worth it during downtime to stick with them.

 

[MaximC]

My worst experiences were with hosts having internet or machine issues causing the server to have major performance issues. One of the best things about the same host was their excellent support and personal connection with clients which made it worth it during downtime to stick with them.

Internet troubles would be a major hassle, I would've thought a hosting company would have pretty substantial internet if they're running servers! Personal connection is a very good point, I'll be definitely making an effort in regards to that.

REDACTED

Automating that on WHMCS should be straightforward to be honest, in mind of course, that you've got IPv4 ready to go.

 

[MaximC]

The amount of hosting companies I've dealt with in the past just shows up so many issues so I'll list them here

First off

• Support is a big one within the question. You need good support that is able to answer tickets within couple of hours or less or even have a Live Support that allows users to communicate with support if they have a technical problem or a billing issue they can connect to the correct department. Over the years of me using hosting companies support is what they mainly lack on and sometimes for a small issue such as a Database Error was rectified after a Week of initial contact and this comes in at having support that has the right experience so making sure you have Technicians on hand that will easily be able to resolve a problem efficiently and also providing a good customer service for the client. Followed onto this you should also make sure you have your other departments be filled with agents that also have the correct experience such as WHMCS, VMPanels etc. If they don't have this experience then you may need to spend time on perfecting that. Even some companies I have worked in the past even had a Support Hotline that was 24/7 using a VOIP System that you may wanna look into
  
  
• Prices is another issue I have dealt with in the past. You don't want your prices to be too low to the fact you are not making money off the server but you also don't want to be too high but with this you need to make sure you can provide servers that are great for the price so do some market research and compare prices with your servers (AND DON'T OVERALLOCATE!). Not only that make sure your Plans are straight to the point and don't overcomplicate with technology jarga just put what facts need to be there on plans. You can put your other features elsewhere!
  
  
• Servers is another thing you need to look into. You do want a server that is powerful enough for the network and even making sure you have great protection and security. Have a look at some server providers or even if you are going to co-locate else where look into there systems and what they can provide for you and make sure you go to a provider that has very low downtime rates other wise explaining that to your SLA Agreement when clients are asking for refunds after you promised no downtime (unplanned) for over 24hours. Another issue is making sure your servers are good at providing the service you need so do testing on full load etc. and figure out what capacity or how many clients you can get on a machine (WITHOUT OVER-ALLOCATING) and obviously make sure you prepare for an Attack so make sure you hire a good System Admin to make sure the servers are secure and protected from DDOS Attacks (Either from the Provider or Adding More Protection *I'd Recommend) Another point on this is do market research of locations as well as I do see companies missing vital locations like AUS and ASIA but look into the servers a little and find out what your possible clients want location wise.
  
  
• Panel - Make sure your panel is at least friendly to people who may not know how to run a server and make it user-friendly and not just stock and also add features like Backups and maybe even a Built in FAQ or Tutorials Section or even a Supported Plugins Installer so even the people who don't know how to install plugins can install them much easier. The amount of hosts that I see who don't spend time making sure the panels are at least friendly to anyone it annoys me seeing panels that have missing features or even features that confuse people.
  
  
• Fees - The biggest anger I have seen around hosts is charging unnecessary fees for setup even though its automated. Look into systems like WHMCS Addons that automate systems and don't charge for support or anything like that. You should only add Fees for Addons that cost you guys. Don't make people unlike you for random fees.
  
  
• Connections - Make sure you work with staff and have bonding events that could help but not just that maybe even connect with your community with events or giveaways so clients don't just feel abandoned and paying you to host there server do something better and maybe allow the community to support each other. Just think Clients are paying you but are you giving them enough love?
  
  This should help but I may of left some other points off here but this is the main vital ones at least and if anyone wants to criticise these or even give feedback on this I am happy to evaluate this and add anything onto this.
  
  Enjoy this and I hope you do well in your company.

Congratulations! We've picked this response as the winner for the $20 reward. I've sent you a PM.

Thank you everyone else for your comments, they were all very helpful.