I had a former employer charge 2x the normal hosting cost from the hosting company he used and this seems to be too much. I was wondering if anyone had any input on this issue?
Its a fairly easy process and doesn’t take much time to set up. It seems wrong to charge 2x the amount for a service that I do not provide, I only set up an account.
One year windows hosting cost $83 and he was charging $200. Whats reasonable?
I think if you provide very cheap web hosting that might look suspicious and might make someone think your services are not good enough.
I agreed some people may doubt if you are selling something very cheap.
My suggestion is to keep it little less but not as less than as 50%…
check what your competitors are charging for shared hosting accounts with similar features. There’s quite a few discount providers out there, but it seems that the majority of shared hosting companies charge between $5 - $10 per month.
How much time do you reckon the client will take in support over a year, and add the setup time. Multiply by your hourly rate. If you look at it like that then your former employers price is quite reasonable.
If you provide high prices no one will never use your services. And if the services are cheap they are not bad. I think that depends on you how you provide support for your customers and how provide service overall.
That might make people think you are not good enough, not your price. 
Depends on what added value is provided. Price isn’t everything. Rackspace could be considerd by many to have ‘high prices’ but it could hardly be said that customers ‘never uses their services’.
Absolutely right… Our pricing is a bit higher than our competitors but we’re definitely not having any issues attracting new clients because price isn’t everything. Especially as a new provider you can’t compete only on price and expect to survive.
Ne web hosting companies do not have #1 and #2 and forced to reduce the prices.
A new provider competing on price isn’t going to last long unless they’re doing it only to gain reputation and plan upon raising prices.
A new provider competing on price isn’t going to last long unless they’re doing it only to gain reputation and plan upon raising prices.
Sounds like a good plan to me, if the financial backing is there. 
These days though, I fear that low pricing alone won’t do the job either. A clever marketing approach would be required as well – perhaps something like a decent paying affiliate program would work, to spread the word.
There are a lot of ways to spread the word beyond simply pricing your packages low… The thing is that everybody and their mom is pricing packages at their new hosting company as low as possible to attract customers and build reputations.
If you really want to make it big in the hosting industry you have to offer something really unique or have a really unique way of going about things - simply pricing low will not lead to success in the long term for sure.
Personally I would plan out 24+ months on any hosting business before starting it up so that I would know where I was, where I wanted to go, and how exactly I was going to get there.
Hosting is a lot of work - it’s not a get rich quick scheme like many would be so inclined to believe
@OP - Good luck.
You don’t want to be in a race to the bottom, do you? And if you ever hope to move up to managed hosting and higher margin services, then you have to appear to be very professional in your presentation of your site and services. The rest comes down to marketing.
Actually it isn’t so much a question of what’s reasonable, it’s a question of what the market will bear. How much are people willing to pay? Yes, 2x sounds like too much. However, if many people are willing to pay that much, then the price is set right.
The trick is determining the market price. You have a little edge here, because you know the person (the former employee). Do you know him well enough to ask him how he’s doing? How sales are going? If he’s making money with his (seemingly too high) price, then it’s priced right and you’ll know that maybe you too can charge a higher price than you thought (though you might want to undercut him a bit and charge less than 2x).
Dan
Hey thanks for the feedback.
i am reseller and we have our own server as well
when we resell ,we sell support and simpify things which consumer would not have been able to do if he had directly contacted seller.
It happens bcoz of locality,availibility etc…