Missy Server

[rlhanson]

I don't think I have met the threshold for a dedicated (75 -100 accounts); do you contact clients about moving to a dedicated when they are using so much of the load?

I just seriously need to get in and unsuspend 2 accounts!

[Matt]

Well, it should be working for you already after I restarted the services. 75-100 accounts would be hindsight in my opinion for looking into a dedicated.

25-50 would be foresight.

Do we ask them to upgrade, sometimes especially if the majority of their sites are causing the problem. But usually no. It just seems to be a combination of everyone on Missy in this case.

We will put a gig or 2 of RAM in there tonight and see if life gets better.

[Matt]

I am also installing a new mail server on here which should help lower the loads overall. Lets see what happens.

[rlhanson]

Thanks for your dedication to this Matt... Is there a way to move to a dedicated without my clients losing all of their emails/contacts, etc.? I still fall short by just a few and only made a marginal profit last year.
Maybe I need to rethink my position as a hosting reseller. The tech support and customer service is pretty time intensive when we have issues.
I guess we'll see how it goes and I'll keep an eye on my financials this year to see if it would be better to not offer hosting for new clients.

I have 62 e-mails coming through - looks like ones I've already received. Yay, I should be getting phone calls any minute now.

[Matt]

Well, 2 ways you can look at that. Most web designers can get away charging in excess of $25 per month I have seen over $100 a month and with this fee some set number of web design hours are bundled into the price. You don't generally need to compete with trying to sell web hosting to random clients off the Internet as I guess most web designers obtain their business locally.

So maybe the answer for you is to raises price and bundle services. Then if you want to sell hosting to the public at large, open a second brand of hosting only that is not associated in any way with your design site.

A dedicated server will allow you to offer more competitive packages inline with the rest of the hosting companies that do not bundle services like design. So you will have the best of both worlds.

Regarding support, you might consider some 3rd party support to run your helpdesk. You can get tickets answered for $2.00 $3.00 a ticket. The support isn't that great and not as tightly integrated as you might want, but that is how most hosts do it during their preliminary growth phase. Lets say you get 10 tickets during a time of "crisis" well you are looking at 30 bucks no matter how many times your techs have to reply. It might get rid of some of your support headaches and allow you to spend more time growing both brands.

Hosting definitely is a 24 hour business. It takes a lot of work but the payoff end the end is a good one if you can stick with it and figure out the answers to the tough problems we have all had to face.

On a side note, if someday you decide its not for you, then let us know and we can help you to transition your clients into our service if you like.

[rlhanson]

Will they lose everything as far as the emails are concerned that are on the current server?

[Matt]

No, nothing is lost during the transfer. They might have a couple emails delivered to the old server during transition but usually not and if they do they can always check the webmail interface on the old server to be sure.

[rlhanson]

Oh okay - that's awesome to know. I'll let you know what I decide to do.
Thanks again Matt!

[rlhanson]

Hey Matt -
Did you get the RAM put in the Missy server? Things have been great until today - we are back to having delays and unable to connect to the database problems.

[Matt]

Missy won't take any more RAM.

We have suggested to a couple of the larger resellers to move to dedicated but no takers yet. Next step is to see if anyone wants to move to dedicated or to another shared server. We've have tuned this machine all that we can and i don't anticipate the load issues that we some mornings to go away until some people start to move to other servers.