Online Reporter
STARTING a website-hosting company in Zimbabwe is not about flash code and cool branding; it is about putting in the time, work and financial resources.
It helps a lot if you have a basic level of proficiency in coding, and information and communication technology in general.
Here is what it takes to get off the ground, costs included.
First, the paperwork.
A private limited company registration costs between US$150 and US$300.
You will need Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) tax registration (free), National Social Security Authority (NSSA) employer registration and a business licence from the local municipality (typically costing US$200 to US$500 annually).
Since you will be handling customer data, a basic data-protection policy, ideally drafted and reviewed by a lawyer, is required. This costs between US$300 and US$800.
If you want to operate under a .zw domain, budget US$70 to US$120 for registration and annual renewal with the Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association.
Then comes the technical backbone.
Zimbabwe’s hosting service providers generally choose between renting servers at global data centres (US$80 to US$300 per month per dedicated machine) or investing in their own.
Setting up locally means importing rack servers — Dell, HP or Supermicro — at US$3 000 to US$8 000 each, with redundancy for failover.
A small starter rack (10U-20U), plus a managed co-location contract at a Harare or Bulawayo data centre, costs US$500 and US$1 200 per month.
Reliable fibre connectivity is non-negotiable — a 100 megabits per second (mbps) business plan needs US$250 to US$500 per month.
Add a hardware firewall (US$500 to US$2 000) and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems (US$1 000 to US$3 000).
Software
The Linux server operating system (OS) is free, but if you opt for Windows Server licences, budget US$500 to US$1 200 each.
Licences for control panel software like cPanel/WHM or Plesk cost US$15 to US$50 per month per server.
Domain reseller accounts with registrars like Namecheap or ResellerClub require a US$50 to US$200 deposit.
SSL certificate (a digital certificate for website security) provision ranges from free (Let’s Encrypt) to US$50-US$300 per year for premium extended validation (EV) certificates.
People are your uptime insurance. At minimum, you will need one systems administrator (US$800 to US$1 500 per month), one customer support rep (US$500 to US$800 per month), one sales or marketing person (US$600 to US$1 000 per month) and freelance developers or security consultants for specialised tasks (US$20 to US$50 per hour).
Marketing is oxygen.
Digital ads on Google and Facebook — US$200 to US$500 per month — bring leads, while SEO (search engine optimisation) content and webinars can pull in small business owners.
Branded email campaigns, business cards and networking events cost another US$300 to US$800 a quarter.
Working capital for six months of operations — covering salaries, bandwidth and software — will need at least US$15 000 to US$30 000.
All in, expect US$40 000 to US$90 000 to launch a modest, but competitive hosting web service business in Zimbabwe, assuming you do not buy your own full-scale data centre.
The most important asset is not your hardware; it is trust.
In hosting, one day of downtime can undo a year of good marketing. If you can keep your clients’ sites live, fast and safe, you have already beaten half the competition.
