How did you start your web hosting business?

I was started web hosting business 5 years ago. Basically I am a web designer and developer. Many of my clients wants a complete website solutions with domain + hosting + emails + website then I decided to purchase my own reseller hosting account. Now I am satisfied to provide all services to my clients.

For the start see how the market is, how you competitors are breathing. Make a business plan. Make sure you have some money on the side because for the first X months for sure you will have losses.
Start with a small reseller account. Try to provide the best support and uptime for your clients.

Started in 2001 as a reseller, didn't plan on making much doing it but a friend of mine was running the company and asked me to resell. Few years later I had hundreds of customers. Now I'm starting my second hosting company and hoping it will do well.

I started from purchasing a server for my own software, then I realized that there are a lot of hosts out there that want to rip people off so I chose to build a hosting company that focused on core values and not on making investors happy.

Design your website yourself or buy a readymade template and find good hosting company then start selling your plan.

I will recommended you to use reseller hosting to sell accounts then move to VPS,etc

Just advertising where I can to who I can and hope they talk about us to their people and it just spreads to a small network of people whom use you. As long as you run your service well, people will stay! :)

We started with a server, where we did a project for one friend. So the friend told another friend that our service is good. And it started.. we decided to register a company and start it bigger :)

Well, I ensured I actually had a service worth marketing first, by extensively testing what I was offering. But then, yes, the website and marketing came next!

We originally started on a reseller then moved to a dedicated box, now we use about 5 of them and growing steadily

Started on a VPS, with website etc etc, become incorporated and now run about 20 servers after a year in business!

I wanted to do it for years and in the end I gave in and started the business, no looking back!