Fraud

Apr 27, 2012 by raindog308

Inevitably, one has to factor fraud into the hosting biz.

Some hosts say 1 in 3 orders is fraudulent.  Consider what happens:

• Someone steals a credit card and signs up with you at $5/month or whatever
• You charge them $5 + $10 to register a domain
• Real owner disputes charge
• You get hit for $20 + the original 30 cent fee + you’ve spent $10 for a domain probably no one wants

In other words, $30 wasted.  One a month means you have to sell 6 legit accounts a month just to cover fraud.

Sure, there’s MaxMind, etc.

Reading through some stuff, it seems like there are the following options:

Auto-Provision Service/Auto-Purchase Domain: leading to what I just described

Auto-Provision Service/Purchase Domain After Verification: This exposes you to having someone setup a spam operation on your servers, host kiddie porn, etc.  Sure, you can shut them down immediately after you discover, and if you have mail throttling in place you probably won’t be blacklisted, but it’s still a risk, though not a financial one.

Manual Verification Before Any Service: A number of hosts do this – most perhaps.  It’s a solid approach that minimizes risk, but it does fail to satisfy that customer’s desire for instant gratification.

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cPanel…or not?

Apr 21, 2012 by raindog308

I’ve been debating whether to use cPanel/WHM.

The main pros are that very similar to those for WHMCS: it’s very common, everyone uses it, it interconnects with everything very well, etc.

But for WHMCS, there are no cons – well, other than the monthly cost, but in my judgment they’re outweighed.

For cPanel, there is a con – it’s easy for someone to pick up and move.  Very easy, in fact.  And all your competitors will be happy to help them.  cPanel is practically plug-and-play.  Want to change hosts?  There’s an icon for that practically.

Now I’m not saying a good host should hold people’s data hostage or make it difficult for them to move.  Not at all.  But the ability to pick up and move just furthers the commoditization of your service.

So would another panel be better?  There are alternatives.  None of them are as well supported, alas.  In the end, I’ll probably stick with cPanel just because of all the panels it’s the one I’m most familiar with.

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WHMCS Leased vs. Owned

Apr 18, 2012 by raindog308

I’m all about being lean/mean for startup costs.

My VPS provider offers WHMCS leased for $5/month.  Unbeatable, right?

Well…on further research, turns out there are some things that this doesn’t give you:

• No free MaxMind lookups.  WHMCS gives you 1,000 free – and 1,000 is $5/month if bought through MaxMind
• No dev instance (one-time $45 fee), though I could buy another one for $5/month from my provider presumably.

The dev instance is actually pretty critical – I’m going to be mucking around with WHMCS and want to be able to make mistakes, skin it, plug into it, etc. without breaking production.

So that works out to +$10/month.  Or about the price difference between my reseller license ($5/month) and leasing one from WHMCS ($15.95/month).

Of course, I could buy one outright for $249 + $45/year but that is a decision I can wait on.

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Logo Still in the Works

Apr 16, 2012 by raindog308

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been working on a logo.

Got three different freelancers to send me a total of 10 different concepts and…they all sucked.

Most were a simple icon with some fancy text, chiseling/beveling, some light effects, etc.  Kind of disappointing.

On the other hand, I’m extremely picky about graphics and customer presentation.  Most of them would work if the buyer just wanted something to slap on a ThemeForest template.

One concept had an icon that I found interesting, and with a bit of a massage, I was able to forge it into a serviceable logo.

The funny thing is that all three of these companies will stick these concepts into their portfolio

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Logo in the Works

Apr 14, 2012 by raindog308

I have a theory that there’s actually one web designer who has generated all hosting company web sites.

OK, that’s probably an exaggeration, but man do they all look alike. Here is one I picked at random, just 10 seconds clicking from a Bing search.  I swear there are at least 100 company sites that look just like that.

I have some ideas for my hosting company web site that will be different and very functional.  I’m good with programming languages (php, etc.) and am conversant in HTML/CSS, but am certainly no design God.  I plan to base my overall design on a couple sites (non-hosting, actually) that I like.  Outsourcing the job would cost $500 and I’d rather take a swing at it myself and spend that money on something else.  Well, unless it turns out looking awful.

However, I did decide to spend some bucks to get some logo ideas.  I contracted with two different vWorker people, plus one from WHT.

There are a lot of bad logo artists out there.  At least a third of the vWorker bids were nothing more than some generic swirly icon (which could have been used for any company) plus the company name written in some fancy font.

Each designer I picked will generate 3-4 designs, then polish one I pick.  I also genned up my own design, which isn’t bad.  I didn’t share it with them so they can bring their own fresh ideas.

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