starting a webhosting business

[homer15]

a friend of mine with a lot of money is interested in starting his own webhosting service... i'm just wondering what all it takes. can somebody please tell me what all he should look for as far as an isp goes, server specs, and what software to run? thanks.

[mairving]

The thing about the webhosting business is that you don't need a lot of money to get started. You can start small by getting a reseller account with a host. As you grow, you migrate to dedicated servers or do a colo (sending your server to someone that has a server farm). I really wouldn't advise running your own servers at least starting out. The cost of the servers, routers, T1 or T3 lines, power, labor is very high. Actually I wouldn't really advise anyone to get into the hosting business. It is a fairly saturated market where you have a lot of customers paying you small amounts of money with cutthroat competition. You will also have to provide 24-hr support, deal with cranky customers, hackers, DOS attacks and the like.

You might also check and ask the same question over at WebHostingTalk.com