competitive shared hosting plans

I'm looking to start a webhosting company. I've found a nicely priced dedicated server I am willing to start out with. I'm currently working out the plans I'm going to offer. Most particularly bandwidth, space, and price. I want to have the most competitive plans out there. So far I am thinking I'll host at least these 2 plans:

Price: $3/month
Bandwidth: 1GB/month
Space: 100MB

Price: $6/month
Bandwidth: 3GB/month
Space: 500MB

So please, list all the services you know of that provide better rates than this. Also, I would like to get suggestions as to how I should configure larger plans.

Also, I would like to know what people look for in a webhost. This includes technical specs and business attributes. At minimum I'd be offering ftp, htaccess, perl, and php.

The one person who replied deleted their posts. Heh, well then, I'll try to simplify my question. I've changed the subject to reflect my new need. Now all I want to know is what people want in a web host like services, technologies etc.

You aint gonna get far just beating around the bush like this.

Why make us do the work for you?

Its not hard to look at other hosting companies to compare against.

And I did that. Hence why I asked what YOU look for in hosting. I no longer care about the other questions.



P.S. I wasn't asking anybody to "work" or search for me. I was asking for recommendations that you just happen to know of.

The price of the plans depend on many things.

1.) Expense... the cost of running the servers and the cost of the softwares
2.) The level of service you are going to offer...
3.) The number of staff you are hiring...



"Most competivtive"... you can offer the plans for $1 a year... that's the best deal for everyone, but eventually you will run out of resource to cover the expense.

To be competitive, I would say you should offer something different than others so that consumers buy hosting from yours because of the unique features you are giving them.

If you are offering the same features like what other hosts are offering, the only thing you can compete with others is the price.

But what would you specifically look for? I look at the list of services offered by a particular webhost and consider many of them useless for my needs. This may be a common thing, I want to know the most important things to emphasize on based not upon theory, but upon people's needs. When they go to a webhost to check them out, they look for things in particular before saying "I think I'll use this guy". I want to know what those particular things are for each of you who are willing to say.

I'm planning on creating a $1/month plan. $1/year is as you say kinda rediculous. The best offer is actually free, but I wasn't looking to be the cheapest, I'm looking to be the most competitive - or at least highly competitive.

Here's an idea to encourage you guys to give me the type of replies I'm looking for. I'll start with what I would look for if I wanted a webhost:

I would require ftp access
I would require htaccess permissions
I would also require perl
I would *like* to have SSI
I don't need more than 100 megs of space
I don't need more than 5 gigabits of bandwidth.
I want it to be less than $100/year
I think that multiple FTP accounts with anonymous included would be useful

People need different things. Some would like front page extension support while they have no knowledge on FTP. Some don't need a web site and would like shell access for compiling their own code (c++, etc...). The specs people required is not the same.

Hosts are providing the most featured pack hosting plans to consumers is because people need different things. Some just need a to store their HTML files without needing any scripting support. Some need scripting and database support to build a data-driven site.

The features of the plans are not the most important thing, but the level of the service and support is most essential to consumers. Even you provide tons of stuff to the user, if there is nobody helping the customers out, they would leave and look for another host.

Here is a list of features I've compiled for myself (your competition!)

http://gto.dynu.com/dev/features.txt
Also a TODO list myself and my coworker are working off of.

http://gto.dynu.com/dev/todo.txt

Some of it applies, others are specificly for me because I'm going the route of hosting them myself on my own machine to begin. No startup cost.

I know yupapa, I know. I'm just gathering statistical information which you don't seem to want to include yourself in. Although, if I were to look for a direct answer to my question in your post I would say that you look for "tech support" quality as the most important thing. Thank you for your reply.

Thank you trininox. Even though you weren't answering my question in what *you* specifically want, that is one impressive list of features. I don't know why I didn't remember the access/error logs stuff - that is a must feature.

My hosting won't be feature rich. I just want to provide some core things that computer savvy people would find useful and no-nonsense at a cheap price. As a programmer I've always tended to prefer to offer a lower level functionality in my products with extensive documentation for those who are newbs (and yes, with great tech support). It gives a lot of flexibility and control to the user and teaches them something besides.