At a time when the market can find hundreds of thousands of different Web Hosting providers, users that are looking to host their websites are becoming lost in all the different choices. This is the main reason for a growing problem for web hosting companies: finding new clients. This “How to get web hosting clients” guide was written by two web hosting industry veterans, and it has been updated for the past decade by one of them (me, Goran Duskic). With that being said, both of us used the singular pronoun “I” because it felt more natural during the writing process.

This guide isn’t the biggest one, so there’s no need just to read the titles and close the page. Read the entire text, and use this as a to-do list. If you cover everything I list here, you are guaranteed to be ahead of the pack.

How to grow your web hosting business

Web hosting is sometimes regarded as a business where money grows on trees; people who move into the business move because of the thought of “easy money.” I tell you from personal experience that it is not so. Web hosting is a challenging industry requiring much effort, patience, nerve, and knowledge.

Before we get to the part about “getting more clients,” I would like to address something. There are three ways you can grow your business. And that’s not just a Web Hosting Business. It’s the same with a SaaS, a software company, a web hosting company, any company.

1. Get more clients
2. Sell your existing clients more often (get them to buy more often, more frequently)
3. Increase prices (improve the quality of product, sell other products through upselling and cross-sell promotions, increase average sale)

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I learned that from Jay Abraham in a seminar, and it helped a lot. Later in this post, we will dive deep into the “get more clients for your web hosting business,” but it doesn’t hurt to think about selling more and selling something that’s more expensive. If you want to sound smart, you could also say that you are working on improving your LTV (lifetime value). That’s the total amount a business will spend with you on average. The higher the number, the better.

3 ways you can grow your web hosting business

That right there would be the 3 ways you can grow your web hosting business. Here’s advice from internet marketing expert Frank Kern that also makes sense. It’s also split into 3 sections.

1. Deliver a great product
2. To the right audience
3. At the right time

When you are trying to get a new client for your web hosting business, have you asked yourself these questions? Is this the right web hosting for this company? Am I selling them this web hosting at the right time for them? Is this company the right client for my web hosting services? If the product is great (pure glass of water), offered to the right audience (thirsty person), and delivered at the right time (after a run in the gym), the sale comes naturally.

I am no match to Jay Abraham and Frank Kern, but I am the author of this article and have nearly two decades of selling various digital services, so here’s my personal take on 3 ways to grow your web hosting business.

Here are the 3 areas of focus for your web hosting business:

1. Bring more traffic to your website
2. Improve your website so that it converts the traffic
3. Improve the product you are selling (in your case, web hosting services)

Later in this guide, you will see that most of the tactics we recommend return to these 3 core principles in one way or another.

Here, we bring you some, mostly free, methods to reach new web hosting clients.

1. Find your target group

First of all, when you go to work, depending on the amount of knowledge and capital, it is important to find your niche target group. You cannot initially offer all possible hosting services that you know exist because you cannot endure it all yourself as a beginner.

Define your niche and your target group, which will be converted and will use your services. This is a recipe for success. Choose from KVM, CDN, shared hosting, game servers, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, or some other vertical. Then, horizontally, you can pick a different target group.

Website investors, web designers, domain investors, WordPress web hosting, small local businesses, restaurants, banks, or any other niche, depending on your contacts, skills, or partnerships.

Once you have your target group, look for them on different social media channels and consider how to reach them. More on social media later on.

Another good idea is to check their ZIP code using a ZIP Code API, and create a targeted campaign.

2. Create a high-quality website for web hosting

Companies generally want to make their website look very cool with a lot of different animations, sounds, backgrounds, videos, photo galleries, etc., and there comes a problem. Visitors are not looking for such websites. Visitors are looking for simply designed websites that serve a purpose.

Good design is simple and clear—no animation, sounds, and all that I have listed above. The website gives the first impression of a company. In the case of online business, it is therefore important that your visitor or potential customer has a positive opinion from the start. It is difficult to expect that you can pay a professional designer who will design you a unique website, but I recommend taking a look at sites like ThemeForest, etc., where you can find high-quality designs at very low prices, which is perfect for starters.

What does a “high-quality” website mean? Let’s list some characteristics that you can try to hit.

1. Unique and helpful content for your clients (ebooks, whitepapers, lectures, videos)
2. With that great content, try to get as many backlinks as possible
3. A modern, professional, user-friendly design template that’s updated every few years (nice icons are a plus)
4. Secure website starting with SSL and other protection plugins or software
5. A fast website that loads in under 3 seconds
6. Mobile-friendly website (also known as responsive design)
7. Do ON-PAGE SEO (we cover SEO separately later on)

You can test the website speed on one of these tools and mobile-friendliness using Google PageSpeed Insights. If your website is scoring low on these tests, I have bad news for you. If you want to learn more about what are Google Lighthouse and Google PageSpeed Insights and about monitoring website performance, I recommend this article:

Should you monitor website performance

Now that you have a great website and you are improving it over the years let’s see what else you can do.

3. Participate in forums and social media pages

One of the best ways to attract customers is to participate in relevant forums actively. In doing so, you need to be careful that your posts are not useless, like “cheap web hosting – check it out”! Your posts need to contain quality content, pointing out to the reader that you know what you’re talking about. Also, you should put in their way the signature and a link to the web page of your web hosting company. Of course, if the forum rules allow it. My recommendation for this kind of advertising is the WebHostingTalk forum. There are sections to advertise your hosting service directly. With this advertising system, you will get good publicity and inbound links to your website, which will fix your reputation in search engines.

In 2024 the power of forums is winding down, but the discussion hasn’t disappeared! It moved to social media websites! Now people are asking questions in Facebook Groups, Quora, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and even YouTube. Go where people are looking for solutions, and bring them back to your website.

4. Write a blog, record a vlog, or start a podcast

Potential clients, but also current ones, like to see that the company they work with really knows their job, and this will be achieved by writing a blog and writing about topics related to web hosting. Show that you know your job, and share your knowledge with others. This will attract new users, as useful and interesting blog articles will be shared on social networks, forums, etc.

If you are not camera-shy, go one step further and record videos, presentations, and lectures and post them on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook or Instagram. It all depends on where your users are located.

Don’t know how to write, and you are camera-shy? What then? Go audio! Start a podcast and use your voice! The most important thing is to create helpful content that your clients can use. For example, if most of your clients have WordPress installed, then offer content such as common WordPress errors, or perhaps double down on WordPress strengths compared to Squarespace.

5. SEO or Search Engine Optimization

Once you’ve chosen a good domain name, rented a server, designed a simple and clear website, it is necessary to do the SEO. Since SEO is something that you probably will not know how to do well yourself, at the very beginning choose a company to do this for you. When choosing a company that will do the SEO I suggest making sure that it is a company that stresses that SEO is a process, not a one-time service.

SEO is a process because the content of the website changes, changing positions on the search engines, and a single service that is a one-time optimization can not forever maintain the results achieved. Today, you are the first, fifth tomorrow, and for a month you are out of the search engine and the first 100 results.

Over the years, SEO has become more and more complex. Why? Well, for one, Google’s algorithms are more complex, and competition is stronger by the day. If you have 10 000 web hosting companies, and you Google “Web hosting”, how do you determine which 10 companies should fill the first ten positions?

High-quality SEO services aren’t cheap. Just one of SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEMRush cost around $150 per month.

6. Social media marketing

Once you start a business, it is important to create profiles on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and become active in them. Create interesting and useful content. Do not be aggressive sellers who post the link to your website non-stop. Instead, create interesting content associated with web hosting. Create infographics, place the datacenter’s image, etc. I suggest you initially read the content available on the Internet about social media marketing on sites like SocialMediaToday and others. Later, if you are able, hire a social media agency to do this part of the job for you in the best way possible.

As your business grows, and traffic starts to convert better, and your budget gets bigger, you may want to try paid advertising on these networks as well.

7. Listing your website and company in directories

Another great way to promote your web hosting company is in various web hosting directories like WHTop. The general directories will not produce a great deal of targeted traffic but they will build your backlinks and help you with some general traffic. If you see a directory that has your competitor listed, you have to be there.

A good way to figure out where your competitors are getting backlinks from is a service called SEMrush, or their competitor Ahrefs. Below you can see what a typical report looks like for a web hosting company we reviewed, Hostinger. As you can see, they have over 100,000 domain names pointing (backlinks) to their website.

8. Local in-person networking

Advertising in your area is an old-school sales tool, but it is still effective. Explore the companies that are in your area. Contact them and arrange a meeting. Present them with your business and what you offer, and tell them exactly why they should use your hosting service to accommodate their corporate website.

While researching and contacting various companies, you will certainly reach new contacts. Spread the news about your hosting company and increase the possibility that any of them will continue to recommend your company.

9. Sponsoring other websites

Find a few websites that, in your opinion, have quality content, contact them, and try to arrange a collaboration. The vast majority of website owners do not have much money for a hosting solution, so they will come in handy for you, and in return, you will get a campaign that you can use to increase the possibility of finding new customers. This method and others I specified are effective based on my experience. Of course, you really have to put in a lot of work and do everything properly.

Here’s a list of potential candidates for sponsoring:

• Startups
• Newly registered company
• NGO’s (non-governmental organization)
• Any non-profit organization
• Animal shelter

10. Satisfied client’s recommendations (affiliate)

Good news travels fast, is an old proverb. When you get the first few clients, make sure they are happy and satisfied with your services because they are the biggest advertisement for your business. If the client is satisfied, they will continue recommending you to their friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc.

It is by far the most effective and best method of advertising. Also, I suggest that current customers get the ability to profit from the partner program. Give them a dollar value reward for each client they recommend. They will make something, and you will surely get great publicity and increase the number of clients.

11. Create an autoresponder / newsletter / mail marketing automation

With an autoresponder, you are able to create your email list. Thousands of digital marketing experts have been raving about having an email list for years, but let’s quickly mention why this is important. An email list lets you build a relationship and help your potential clients, and you can do it as often as you want. Sure, you have to pay a monthly fee, but it’s not like you are paying for every click that happens. Options are practically limitless, here are some of them.

Use an API to add an email to your email list every time you get a sign-up or an ebook download. Set up a landing page where you give something away for free as long as you get an email address from a potential client. Create a mail marketing workflow, and send different messages depending on your reader’s action. Send different messages if the reader is opening the emails or if (s)he isn’t opening them.

Some autoresponder and newsletter services also offer landing page creation and webinar solutions. This could easily be another tactic for finding new clients for your web hosting business. They are really low-cost. In some cases, all you need is one client to pay for the entire service!

12. Offer something “competitors” don’t

You probably heard of USP (unique selling proposition). Well, what’s yours? Be bold and offer something “they” don’t. Create a leapfrog product (Steve Jobs’ words) and offer something your competition can’t copy!

You are guaranteed to get and keep clients if you have something your competitors can’t offer. Remember how DigitalOcean started offering $5 SSD cloud instances and grew so fast that in 2021? They became a publicly traded company! Start a brainstorming session, and figure out what your strengths are and what you can offer. In 2006, my web hosting company offered web hosting packages that grew daily. So if you bought a 300MB web hosting package, by the end of your first year, you would get 665MB. As I said, this was way back in 2006, before unlimited web hosting space, but you get the idea. It got the press and clients talking because nobody else was doing it.

How to get web hosting clients? Stand out!

It’s hard to offer something your competitors can’t offer, so do your best to stand out. Amazing graphics can help you do that. Go quirky, try retro old computer graphics, try something different, don’t be boring, and get potential clients to at least talk about you.

13. Outwork and outsmart your competitors

Just as Mitch Wainer, the co-founder and marketing genius at DigitalOcean, shared with us in an interview;

I believe that it’s important to have a strategic marketing plan. Unless you’re the first player in an industry, you need to be as competitive and as aggressive as possible with your efforts, because you are trying to take a piece of a market share that’s already being consumed by multiple companies at the same time. You have to make sure your message stands out. You have to make sure your positioning stands out; that your marketing channels are far and above your competitors. And that’s really what we’re trying to do here.

As you can see, even if you have a superior product to your competitors, as DigitalOcean had with their $5 SSD cloud instances, you also have to have a strategic marketing plan and tell the World that you have a superior product.

14. Build a great domain availability checker

These days, it’s super easy to build an interesting bulk domain availability tool. You have your domain availability API, and your code examples, and with a little bit of JavaScript, you can have your domain checker in no time. The most important thing is that the client needs the domain name and expects to find it with a domain checker. Think about it. If you are selling a web hosting service, can they use it without a domain name? If they can’t, then sell them domain registration.

I am not naive to expect that the client hasn’t heard of GoDaddy and other great places to register a domain name. But, to most clients, it’s all the same with whom they register a domain name. Not to mention, it’s going to be easier for you to help your client set up their website, set up a business email solution like Office 365, or install an SSL certificate. Speaking of…

15. Offer SSL certificate installation

Today it’s ridiculous to host a website without an SSL certificate. Benefits from SSL certificates have been known for a while now, so why not forward that to your clients? Other web hosting companies like Greengeeks (which we reviewed) have created a simple tool where a user can install a free (or paid) version of an SSL certificate with a few simple clicks! There is no need for any developer or sys-admin knowledge!

Installing SSL certificates is a great way of showing you care, and by reselling Extended Validation (EV SSL certificates), you can make some extra money with your existing client base. Speaking of SSL certificates, there’s a great SSL API solution that can help you check thousands (or millions, depending on your budget) of domain names if they have installed SSL certificates.

If there is an SSL certificate installed, you can check when it expires. That way, you can check all your existing client base and offer them SSL certificate installation or transfer of existing SSL certificates.

16. Get reviews from bloggers and potential clients

If you were reading this guide carefully, you noticed I mentioned that we reviewed web hosting companies (GreenGeeks, Hostinger), and that right there is a common tactic of getting backlinks from other reputable websites. Getting testimonials and posting them on your website is another common tactic.

It’s very hard to talk about “getting other websites to post reviews about your web hosting company” without talking about getting backlinks… Because there could easily be another guide about getting backlinks altogether. So let’s continue with the tactic of getting reviews. These paid and free reviews will bring in traffic and potential clients. This is one of our top priorities established at the beginning of the article. But it will also improve the domain authority and search traffic.

17. Keep your IP addresses off of blacklists

Having a great product and a service you are offering is perhaps your top priority. If you have a lousy service, the clients that do come will quickly leave. If your dedicated IP addresses are constantly blacklisted for spamming, it’s not going to be a great experience for your clients. We already wrote some advice on how to deal with blacklists, so we won’t repeat it here. But you can certainly check it out if that hasn’t been your focus until now.

Our Blacklist API can help you set up notifications so that you know the instant when your IP address is blacklisted, you can respond. You don’t want your client contacting you about a blacklisted IP. The clients themselves are capable of setting up free blacklist monitoring. Eventually, the service emails you when you are blacklisted. A great web hosting provider takes care of that.

18. Offer professional email services

Here’s an idea to grow your revenue and reduce the chance of getting blacklisted. If you know your clients are heavy email users, why not get them away from your IP address? Offer to install professional email services like Gsuite or Office 365. Your clients will benefit but don’t know how to set up MX or DMARC on your server. Help them with that, and make extra revenue.

In this “How to get web hosting clients” guide, we already mentioned you should create an autoresponder or a newsletter service. Do you think your clients could also benefit from that service? If your clients are constantly emailing their clients through services like Roundcube or their local Outlook program, why not offer them a service like Mailchimp or GetResponse? You can make money through their affiliate programs or just score points with your client by helping them find a better solution.

19. Make billing, tickets, and other admin work a breeze

Once you get to around 100 clients, it doesn’t make sense to manually send invoices and handle tickets via emails. That’s when a system like WHMCS comes in very, very handy! It will automatically send invoice reminders to all your clients. And since customer support in web hosting is very important, you will be happy to know that WHMCS has a ticketing system as well!

Earlier in this guide, we mentioned you could resell SSL certificates, well, that’s a couple of clicks away with WHMCS. Now that I think about it, perhaps we should write a review of WHMCS because it’s a helpful tool for growing a web hosting business.

With WHMCS, it’s easy to automate domain registration and open new web hosting accounts, and pretty much any action in your web hosting business can be automated.

20. Pick a great dedicated server or datacenter

When I first started my web hosting company, I bought a reseller plan from a local web hosting company. We designed websites, and we needed a place to host them. Once we grew enough, we rented a dedicated server, and that was a big turning point for us. Unlike some web hosting companies, we weren’t overselling a lot, and our clients entrusted us with renewals.

What is overselling?

If you are not familiar with the term overselling, here’s the gist of it. When a web hosting provider sells more bandwidth and disk space than they physically have. So let’s say you have 100 Gb disk space, but you sell 100 X 10 Gb  (1000Gb in total) disk space to your clients. Essentially, you sold 1000 Gb of disk space because you knew your clients would not use all 100 Gb disk space that you have.

Overselling is not a big problem if you have experience and procedures in place. Also, you have to be careful not to oversell (through a web hosting reseller package) on a web hosting provider who is known for overselling. It becomes like a house of cards, and crashes are inevitable.

Once you have enough clients and you have the budget to rent a dedicated server, try not to spend all your profits on this one server. Hetzner is a good cost-effective solution.

21. Offer great customer support (chat, 0800)

We’ve already established the importance of customer support in the web hosting business, so let’s expand on that. You can install a chat service on your website. For example, we are using Tawk.to, and can definitely recommend it to you. You need to have a great ticketing system. You can use both Tawk.to or WHMCS. And, if you are a larger company, a free phone number (0800 in the US) is a must.

You have to make it super easy for clients to reach out to you.

When you are starting out, don’t host your website on the same server with your clients. That way, when the server is down, they won’t be able to reach your website.

Your website (along with a chat or 0800) always has to be available.

Nowadays, we often rely on tutorials and information that are readily available. We become either lazy or don’t have time to do the research and find necessary answers and solutions to our problems. It became a routine in every aspect of life. We don’t know how to do something and search online in the hope of finding a solution. But when it’s about a specific product or service we are paying for, we want to have great support. Every product we buy comes with a warranty and product instructions to use. Every service should have some warranty and great instructions to use, and customer support. Many people, beginner or experienced users, happen to find some problems with a service. They might know a solution, but they actually don’t need to know everything, they should (just) have proper support.

Every web hosting service has some kind of support

Every web hosting service has some kind of support for its clients. Also, they offer their customers answers to frequently asked questions or FAQs. But, what happens in case of an unexpected error, some colossal failure? Servers can have hiccups too. What do you do then? Sit in front of your monitor and wait for everything to work again? Of course not. Everybody does the same thing: contact customer support. There are many errors that the client can’t solve on their own, and there’s nothing they can do about it. If your page loads slowly, your visitors might give up and never come back. That’s a serious problem! And it can indicate that the server is slow. It is definitely not a problem you are supposed to solve. Missing e-mails or other mailing difficulties can also point to problems with a server.

Another problem is that sometimes you discover your page is unavailable. In that case, your visitors are completely unable to reach you, and you are losing them. That’s also a major problem, and it also indicates a server issue. You shouldn’t have more than a few minutes per month of downtime for server maintenance. If that is not the case, clients will contact web hosting customer support.

If the host is serious about doing business, they won’t let the client down. They will enable all support needed just for that specific case. They will accept the client’s problem seriously and won’t let them wait too long because they must be aware of the importance of customer support. Not only in specific and major issues like those that are out of the customer’s control but every problem. Even when it is explained in detail in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

Customer Support is a great long-term investment

Customer Support is one of the criteria that makes someone a great web hosting provider. As I mentioned before, all of us nowadays expect to have easy answers to our questions, so web hosts should be aware of that. There is a saying: “The customer is always right.” A serious business owner must consider it and keep it in their mind all the time. There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.

So, web hosts, use your knowledge and all your possibilities to help your customers and answer their questions in time. No matter what the problem is or its simplicity, help your customers in finding a solution. Or, even better, offer them a quick and easy solution. It won’t cost you much, but it will help you in getting a reputation as a reliable web hosting. And who doesn’t want to pay for a reliable service? If you demonstrate your real value, you can count that your customers will come back and be loyal by repurchasing and continuing your services. There will be fewer customers leaving, and it will reduce negative word of mouth. Everything you offer, such as the hosting package or good price combination, can attract customers in the beginning. But only your trustworthiness and courtesy can make your clients stay with you. And that is what counts in the long run. It is definitely cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones. So, be the best you can be. Offer your customers as much as you can, and it will pay off.

22. Backup everything

I know I am going out on a limb here. This is a “how to get more clients” guide, and I am writing about backup. That’s why I left this advice for last, but it’s definitely not the least important. Why? Would you believe me if I told you I know at least 2 web hosting companies that went under because they haven’t backed up properly? If you run a web hosting business, I guarantee that you will have a “disaster day.”

On that day, you will either have a disaster recovery solution in place, or you will start looking for a job. You can play offense (getting more clients) only after you have your defense up and running. A great disaster recovery solution today isn’t very expensive and can save your business on that judgment day. Trust me, it’s not a question of if it will come, it’s a question of when it will come.

23. Make uptime a priority

What are the clients paying you, what is your one job? To keep the website up and running. So what do web hosting clients hate most? Website downtime, of course! So, make it your top priority to have near-zero downtime. When you do experience downtime, go out of your way to communicate this clearly with your clients.

The cost of website downtime is on the rise with all the WordPress websites installing WooComerce, and website builders like Wix and Squarespace are focusing more on eCommerce. The success of Shopify is well known, so it’s clear that commerce is moving online every day. If your server is not up and running, it means that your clients are losing money!

24. List of small improvements you can make today

1. Use private nameservers with your company name
2. Create stunning hosting packages with a special bonus
3. Make sure your website doesn’t have any errors (including grammar)
4. Install the EV SSL certificate on your website
5. Install chat on your website (it’s literally copy-pasting the code in the footer of your website)
6. Get one good backlink pointing to your website.
7. Ask your best client for a testimonial or contact details of 3 potential web hosting clients
8. Make uptime a priority

Summary of how to get web hosting clients

If you thought this “How to get web hosting clients” guide was helpful, check our short guide on digital marketing for SAAS.

We are absolutely sure you will be able to apply some of the principles to your business! In that post, you can read about blogging, research, white papers, infographics, social media, newsletters, direct mail, and marketing automation, landing pages, conversion rate optimization, and search engine optimization. It’s another massive guide with over 4000 words, and we think it will really add value to your online marketing strategy or at least spark a few great ideas.

P.S.
This article was originally written by Branimir Grabovac (top 10 ways of reaching new clients for a new web hosting company) back in 2015, but it has been updated and expanded several times by Goran Duskic. Both of us were running a small web hosting business (separately) that we eventually sold.

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