becoming a host

ok, Venture Skills has been a resller for many years but we "manage" nearly all of those accounts, those we don't manage are normally to other IT web companies who know what they are doing ;) as such I never really spent any time learning how reselling industry worked.

I'm now building a hosting service for a niche market one that will not be massively profitable but will provide a small income my plan is to offer,

PHP 5 + Mysql
Ruby on Rails
Python
500mb space
3GB transfer
Shared SSL
Cpanel
3 Domains/unlimited subdomains

Now the plan is to sell this at £5/month preconfigured for GAFYD (to get referal bonus)
Also a free domain to get them started which we will buy and transfer to them after a years hosting.

£5 is nearly $10 is that to expensive for this sort of service?
Normally I wouldn't enter such a competitive market but as I said I think I have found an untouched niche,

The plan is to use http://www.idevdirect.com to run an affiliate scheme which pays 1 month hosting to the affiliate i.e we pay £5 per complete referral again to cheap?

Tim, I think you should try this package for a niche:

"Ruby on Rails" Hosting


as far I know there are not so much "cheaper" hosting accounts offering ruby...

the price is very high in comparison with offers from the bigger guys, currently my a partner is offering 120GB/1.2 TB for the same amount (or less)

Ruby on Rails was going to be one of the selling points along with python,
we were planning on running some addon's like access to flash media server (we currently use it only 40% of the time) so we could sell space on it during low periods.

flash media server would be another selling point for a "special" hosting product ;)

You can add some more added value services. For instance you can also add php4, and smart publisher.

I think the price is a little expensive. I am not sure about ruby hosting, but there are php hosts that sell services like this for 2-3$. I guess you can backup a price like this with the extra stuff you can add.

due to the nature of the niche PHP 4 wouldn't be suitable nor to be fair would it really appeal I think, but yes I guess we would have to increase the what we are offering

It is easy to have both php 4 and 5 in the same server, but as most hosts don't have them both, I guess it can help you a little.

Ok,
well the plan is to
Offer all the above,
a free domain, preconfigured to Google Hosted apps (during the sign up we will offer the choice to use standard webmail but push Google)
Fantastico  1 click solutions
Mailing lists - ability to set up unlimited mailing lists on their domain (though restrict it to double opt in)
Ruby on Rails support
Python support including Zope
Chron
SSL
Zend optimser

Carbon neutral for a £1 more - we will use the money to improve our facilities carbon output and offset the rest (it will actually cost £1.50 but we will put in the 50p)

Access to Media streaming servers for Live streaming (charged separately but at a huge discount by the bandwidth)
Email, Skype, Phone support
nice affiliate referral scheme

£2 more SSH access +
Ability to install your own pear modules
install files in home (though access is Jailed)
SFTP

So in theory for £8 you get a carbon neutral very cool account :)
The streaming would be charged at something like £1gb of bandwidth

That sounds great, especially the zend optimizer part :)

nice well the plan is to beta test with 20 signups (our break even point on hard costs) since we already have that many on the waiting list we have nothing to loose :)

not sure.. $10 for 500mb and 3gb..i think your support should be superb then..:)