New hosting company site feedback

[DARKLESS-LTD]

Hi everyone,

I’m the founder of Darkless LTD, a hosting company launched in August 2023. We only use owned hardware and are committed to maintaining this as we grow. Despite our efforts, our customer base isn't growing as expected. We’d really appreciate it if you could review our website and forum thread to help identify potential areas for improvement.

Website: here
BBB Thread: here

Based on previous feedback, we’ve already reduced our prices to $1-$2 per GB RAM as we strive to attract new clients. While we anticipate the impact of this change, I’m eager to gather insights on additional strategies to enhance our marketing and services:

• SEO Initiatives: Backlinks, blogging, and expanding our knowledge base.
• Affiliate Marketing: Considering a program to reward referrals.
• Google Ads: Planning to start campaigns soon.

Questions for You:

1. What other marketing strategies could we consider?
2. What should be our priority in marketing efforts?
3. Any suggestions for improving our VPS/hosting services?
4. We’re developing features for Minecraft server hosting—any specific tools or services you think would be essential?
5. Are there any tools or programs that you would like that would benefit you?
6. Would a comparison page like Bloom’s be beneficial for potential clients?
   
   
   
   
7. We are currently looking into web-hosting and discord-bot hosting. Pricing for this will be from $1 to $5 based on tiers. Is there any interest in this?

Your insights would be incredibly valuable and could really help shape our future steps. Thank you so much for taking the time to help us grow and improve!

 

[Tom]

A couple of things:

You are in an extremely oversaturated industry. Price really does not equal customers. Someone will always undercut you, especially if the servers are in London, where colocation costs are generally quite high. If you are struggling to grow with VPS, expanding into web hosting and bot hosting, which are just as (if not more) oversaturated, doesn't seem like a great idea. Looking at just the VPS page, I'm getting no real information as to what makes your service better than the other 100's of hosts offering the same plans, it all just seems to be very generic information.

The VPS page does, however, state you have a custom control panel. I'd consider this unique, seeing as most providers are just using SolusVM, but there's no information on it anywhere on the page. There's not even screenshots. There's also no info on supported OS's, even when checking out. I basically have 0 idea as to what I can actually do in the panel, as I'm used to industry standard panels like SolusVM. This might be somewhere in your KB, but realistically if I'm looking at tons of hosts I'm not going to be clicking around on various pages to find that information.

If I'm being brutally honest, there's nothing on your VPS page that grabs my attention at all that would make me consider you above any other provider. Probably even ranked lower due to lacking the basic information. I think you've probably got the right idea in trying to be unique, but you've missed the basics of actually showing how you are - I'd highly recommend working on that page to hit as many keywords/features as you can, so someone can gather what you are offering on a single page.

Additionally, consider providing information as to the datacenter you use, add a looking glass, etc.

Sidenote: You are registered in the UK (We use the same accountants, ha), which means the companies registered address and registration number (among other things) must be displayed on the site in an easily found place (Companies Act 2006). I couldn't find it anywhere after looking briefly. But on the about page of your site, you instead say Darkless, LC, a US based hosting company? Furthermore, you do not appear to be registered with the ICO, which you legally should be considering the data you store.

Edit: Not trying to be rude, but the more I look around your site, the more it feels like most of the information on there was put there in two seconds to fill up the template. It doesn't seem like any thought has been put into most of the text.

 

[DARKLESS-LTD]

Our servers are currently in Chicago and I don't believe anyone will be undercutting our prices right now for 7950x VPS, but your point is still valid I am sure someone in the future will.

In relation to the site we will be going for a re-design and having something that looks a lot better and unique with a lot more information. We support every os including custom ISO's if required so that is not a problem, but we will make sure to make that clear as well. We currently don't have any information in our knowledge base (It's a long story) but we need to do that as well.

We are currently setting up a looking glass page which should be in production soon. But we will 100% provide more information on DC and VPS location.

Regarding the side-note we will ensure that, that is all above board and the company information is on the new site, will get these done as a matter of urgency.

No it is absolutely not rude, we are looking for feedback and so absolutely not worried about it being "rude" because we need to improve and we would rather get honest feedback.

Things to improve on then will be:

1. Company registration on site and ICO registration (P1) (will be done by by tomorrow at the latest) - Done will be making the payment for ICO tomorrow
2. Better site - including more information (Plan is to also have a re-designed site with a blog soon)
- Improved offerings for VPS and information
- Supported OS environments (Explaining custom ISO as well)
- Improved page to grab attention of users
- Separate pages for different target clients (E.g. MC-Page with sub-domain mc.darkless.cloud )
- Show how we are unique - (We will have some new packages soon that will help with that and we should definitely add that to our site)
- Knowledge base
3. Looking glass + DC information

I think that covers everything but if I have missed anything let me know.