The web hosting business plan

by Patrick Yagi

10th January 2022

Quickly, we learned that Rwanda has long placed technology and innovation at the heart
of efforts to boost the country's economic development, and every business’s online
presence, regardless of industry, has a massive impact on its success. So, we decided
to play a pivotal role in offering web hosting services built to make life easier for
developers and their customers.
Yagibaze is a revolutionary web hosting company on a mission to provide the latest
optimized web hosting services in Rwanda.

Patrick Yagi established Yagibaze with a belief that fast and reliable growth comes from
rapid adaptation to the latest technology advancements.

At Yagibaze, we plan to provide the following web hosting solutions:

Shared hosting
Shared hosting allocates web resources with a group of people. In this hosting, the web
server will be distributed with other websites and the resources such as memory
options, CPU and other hosting plugins are provided on a sharing basis. Databases
hosted as part of shared web hosting are limited to 5GB/database and email accounts
hosted as part of shared hosting are limited to 15GB. This type of hosting will be good
to start with low traffic websites.

WordPress hosting
WordPress hosting is a shared or single-tenant hosting environment that is specifically
optimized and fine-tuned for WordPress websites. This type of hosting takes the
guesswork out of the process of configuring a server and building a website from
scratch because the environment is set up from the ground up for WordPress, there is
no need to take into account software and frameworks that run on other sites and
applications. The key will be to provide maximum user performance without the need to
manage a server.

VPS hosting
VPS which means "virtual private server" is a dynamic virtualized hosting server that
exists within a parent server on cloud infrastructure. Typically, a user will have access to
the root as well as secure shell (SSH) and secure file transfer protocol (SFTP). VPS
hosting will usually have a set allocation of resources to each server instance. Our VPS
offerings will be single-tenant, meaning that RAM, CPU cores and storage are specific to
a single user/owner instead of shared among many users. Operating system options
will include multiple flavors of Linux as well as Windows.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting gives a user full control over the resources. Our dedicated server will
be issued with the access level decided by us. With this hosting, users will need to take
care of the services which are issued in their name for its use. This is mainly used for
websites having high traffic and huge content.

Domain name services

A domain name is simply a human-readable form of an IP address. In other words, it's
the destination someone types into a web browser such as www.anything.com. Similar
to how to scroll to a contact in a phone rather than manually dialing a phone number,
domain names make it easier for us to navigate the online world and avoid having to
memorize long IP addresses. Users will be able to transfer either the domain
registration or simply update the DNS at their current registrar to point to their Yagibaze
account, or both.

The Yagibaze's main focus is to remain accountable to the highest standards by

meeting our client’s needs precisely and cultivating a working environment that provides
a human and sustainable approach to earning a living and living in our world for our
partners, employees and our clients.

Roles and responsibilities at Yagibaze:

Chief Executive Officer

➔ Increases management’s effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training,
coaching, counseling, and disciplining managers.
➔ Communicates values, strategies, and objectives of the company
➔ Assigns accountabilities.
➔ Planning, monitoring, and appraising job results.
➔ Developing incentives.
➔ Developing a climate for offering information and opinions among team
members.
➔ Providing educational tools.
➔ Responsible for providing direction for the business.
➔ Creates, communicates, and implements the company’s vision, mission and
overall direction.
➔ Leads the development and implementation of the overall business strategy.
➔ Responsible for signing checks and documents on behalf of the company.
➔ Evaluates the success of the company.
General Manager
➔ Serves as project manager of the company, working directly with employees.
➔ Responsible for designing concepts and contracts.
➔ Develops a strategic plan by studying technological and financial opportunities.
➔ Presenting assumptions.
➔ Recommending objectives.
➔ Accomplishes subsidiary objectives by establishing plans, budgets, and results
from measurements.
➔ Allocating resources, reviewing progress and making mid-course corrections.
➔ Coordinates efforts by establishing procurement, production, marketing, field and
technical services policies and practices.
➔ Coordinates actions with corporate staff.
➔ Builds company image by collaborating with customers, government, community
organizations, partners and employees, enforcing ethical business practices.
➔ Maintains quality service by establishing and enforcing company standards.
➔ Maintains professional and technical knowledge by attending educational
workshops, reviewing professional publications, establishing personal networks,
benchmarking state-of-the-art practices and participating in professional
societies.
➔ Makes certain production and development departments perform efficiently by
coordinating employee efforts.
➔ Facilitates communications between management and IT experts.
➔ Ensures that the company works in line with international best practices.

Admin
➔ Responsible for overseeing the smooth running of human resources and
administrative tasks for the company.
➔ Designs job descriptions with KPI to drive performance management for clients.
➔ Regularly hold meetings with key stakeholders to review the effectiveness of
human resources policies, procedures and processes.
➔ Maintains office supplies by checking stocks, placing and expediting orders.
➔ Evaluating new products.
➔ Ensures operation of equipment by completing preventive maintenance
requirements and calling for repairs.
➔ Defines job positions for recruitment and managing interviewing processes.
➔ Carries out staff induction for new team members.
➔ Responsible for training, evaluation and assessment of employees.
➔ Responsible for arranging travel, meetings and appointments.
 ➔ Maintains professional and technical knowledge by attending educational
workshops, reviewing professional publications, establishing personal networks,
benchmarking state-of-the-art practices and participating in professional
societies.
➔ Oversees the smooth running of the daily office activities.

Sales and Marketing Manager

➔ Manages external research and coordinates all the internal sources of
information to retain the company's royal customers and attract new ones.
➔ Models demographic information and analyzes the volumes of transactional data
generated by customers.
➔ Identifies development opportunities and follows up on development leads and
contacts.
➔ Participates in the structuring and financing of projects
➔ Assures the completion of development projects.
➔ Writes winning proposal documents.
➔ Negotiate fees and rates in line with the company’s policy.
➔ Responsible for handling business research, market surveys and feasibility
studies for clients.
➔ Responsible for supervising implementation.
➔ Responsible for advocating the customer’s needs and communicating with
clients.
➔ Develops, executes and evaluates new campaigns for expanding increased sales.
➔ Creates new market connections with businesses for the company.
➔ Empowers and motivates the sales team to meet and surpass aimed targets.

Accountant
➔ Responsible for preparing financial reports, budgets, and financial statements for
the company.
➔ Provides management with financial analyses, development budgets and
accounting reports.
➔ Handles all financial transactions for the company.
➔ Analyzes financial feasibility for the most complex proposed projects.
➔ Conducts market research to forecast trends and business conditions.
➔ Responsible for financial forecasting and risk analysis.
➔ Performs cash management, general ledger accounting, and financial reporting
for one or more properties.
➔ Responsible for developing and managing financial systems and policies.
 ➔ Responsible for administering payrolls.
➔ Ensures compliance with tax issues.
➔ Serves as an internal auditor for the company.

IT Specialists
➔ Communicate with clients to determine their custom needs and budget.
➔ Handle website hosting services.
➔ Process site builder products.
➔ Configure security, email and business features.
➔ Installs web applications for clients.
➔ Responsible for providing all security and value-added features in the system.
➔ Handles other website hosting related advisory and consultancy services.
➔ Responsible for optimizing website functionality for existing clients.
➔ Responsible for search engine optimization services and programming services.
➔ Maintaining a current hosting environment
➔ Providing support for customers on specific hosting issues including debugging
customer sites to aid in problem resolution as well as customer initial setup of
sites.
➔ Ensuring servers are kept up to date and free of potential exploits.
➔ Set up and deploy new hosting servers and maintain a highly available
environment to minimize interruption to customers.
➔ Research competitive product offerings and recommend changes to existing
products or new additions.
➔ Performing DNS transfers and set up on behalf of customers
➔ Troubleshooting DNS issues.
➔ Ensuring customers' data is protected.
➔ Monitoring the health of the entire hosting environment.
➔ Troubleshooting advanced customer network connectivity issues, VoIP
connectivity and customer-facing email issues.
➔ Assisting in maintaining internal corporate systems including business email
messaging, websites, databases and support systems.
➔ Participate in maintaining server-based hardware and iSCSI SAN plus monitoring
systems to detect faults or resource outages for the whole system.

Customer care
➔ Welcomes visitors and potential clients by greeting them in person or on the
phone, answering or directing inquiries.
 ➔ Ensures that all contacts with clients (emails, walk-in center, SMS or phone calls)
provide the client with a personalized customer service experience of the highest
level
➔ Uses every opportunity gained to build client’s interest in the company’s products
and services through interaction with clients on the phone.
➔ Manages administrative duties assigned by the general manager in an effective
and timely manner.
➔ Consistently stays updated on any new information on the organization’s
products, promotional campaigns and more.
➔ Ensures accurate and helpful information is supplied to clients when they make
inquiries.

We will ensure that we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards by meeting
our client’s needs precisely and cultivating a working environment that provides a
human and sustainable approach to earning a living, and living in our world, for our
partners, employees and our clients.

Because of our drive for excellence when it comes to running a web hosting company,
we were able to employ some of the finest business consultants in Rwanda to look
through our business concept and together we were able to critically examine the
perspective of the business and to access ourselves to be sure we have what it takes to
run an impactful web hosting company.

Given that, we were able to take stock of our strengths, our weaknesses, our
opportunities and also the threats that we are likely going to be exposed to in our
journey.

Strength: Our core strength lies in the power of our team, our workforce and our
customer base. We strive to have a team of creative and highly proficient web hosting
experts, a team with excellent qualifications and great experience in WordPress hosting.

Aside from the synergy that exists in our website hosting experts, we have reserved the
state-of-the-art service that will guarantee 99.9% uptime and our services will be guided
by the new game-changing LiteSpeed module.

Weaknesses: As a new web hosting company in Rwanda, it might take some time for us
to break into the market and gain acceptance, especially from top-profile clients.
Another weakness is that we currently don’t have the required money to pump into
starting and promoting our business the way we would want to.
Opportunities: Without any doubt, the opportunities in the web hosting industry are
massive considering the number of individuals and corporate organizations whose
businesses depend on the services we will be offering. As a web hosting company, we
are ready to take advantage of any opportunity that is available in the industry, as well
as create them ourselves.

Threats: Just like any other business, one of the major threats that we are likely going to
face is the economic downturn. It is a fact that an economic downturn affects
purchasing power. Another threat that may likely confront us is the arrival of new
website hosting companies in the same location where our target market exists and
who may want to adopt the same business model like us.

Market analysis
Before launching Yagibaze, we are certain that In Rwanda, hosting services have
become pretty in-demand as everyone is trying to go online, and there is a wide range of
both corporates and individuals who can’t successfully run their businesses without the
services of web hosting.

Because of that, we have created strategies that will enable us to reach out to various
corporate organizations and individuals around the country who we know can’t afford to
do without our services. We have conducted our market research and survey and we will
ensure that our web hosting services are well accepted in Rwanda.

Below is a list of the people and organizations that we will specifically market our
products and services to:

★ Website designers and IT specialists

★ Banks, insurance companies and other related financial institutions
★ Blue chips companies
★ Corporate organizations
★ Manufacturers and distributors
★ Real estate owners, developers, and contractors
★ Research and development companies
★ The government (Public sector)
★ Schools (High schools, colleges and universities)
★ Hotels
★ Celebrities, politicians, public figures and public speakers
★ Sport organizations
★ Religious organizations
★ Political parties
 ★ TV stations
★ The printing press (publishing houses) and authors
★ Branding and advertising agencies
★ Entrepreneurs and start-ups

Our competitive advantage

Surviving in the business world as a website hosting company requires more than our
expertise, knowing how to deliver quality services, but also mastering how to network
with key people that matter, decision makers that can decide to get a web hosting
contract.

We are quite aware that to be highly competitive in the industry means that we are not
only expected to be able to deliver consistent and highly reliable hosting services, but
we must be able to meet the set targets. We know that no one would want to continue
to hire our services if we don’t meet up with the target solutions.

Our competitive advantage will lie in the power of the whole Yagibaze team. Especially,
all our technical experts will be well taken care of, and their welfare package will be
among the best within our category (best web hosting services provider in Rwanda),
which will enable them to be more than willing to build the business with us and help
deliver our set goals and achieve all our business objectives.

Marketing and sales strategy

Yagibaze hope to maximize profits in the web hosting industry and we are going to go
all the way to ensure that we do all it takes to meet and surpass the expectations of
both our clients and us.

We will generate income by offering the web hosting and domain name services as
stated above.

Our marketing and sales team will be recruited based on their vast experience in digital
marketing, and they will be trained regularly to be well equipped to meet their tasks and
the overall business goal of Yagibaze

Our corporate goal is to grow Yagibaze to become the top web hosting provider in
Rwanda by 2024, which is why we have mapped out a strategy that will help us take
advantage of the available market and grow as big as possible.

Yagibaze is set to make use of the following marketing and sales strategies to attract
clients:
 ❖ Introduce our web hosting company by sending introductory letters alongside our
brochure to individuals, web designers, professionals, corporate organizations,
religious organizations and key stakeholders.
❖ Advertise our business in relevant business marketing channels like Facebook
and Google Ads.
❖ Attend relevant international and local expos, seminars and business events
❖ Create different packages for different categories of clients to work with their
budgets and still deliver excellent and reliable services
❖ Leverage the email marketing to promote our business
❖ Engage direct marketing approach
❖ Encourage word of mouth marketing from loyal and satisfied clients

Advertisement strategy
We have been able to work with our in-house brand consultants to help us map out
advertising strategies that will help us walk our way into the heart of our target market.

Below are the platforms we intend to leverage to promote and advertise Yagibaze:

❖ Leverage the internet and social media platforms like Google, Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube and Linkedin to promote our services
❖ Install our billboards in strategic locations all around Rwanda.
❖ Distribute our fliers and handbills in target areas
❖ Contact corporate organizations by calling them up and informing them of
Yagibaze and the services we offer
❖ List our web hosting company in local business directories/yellow pages
❖ Advertise our web hosting company on our official website and employ strategies
that will help us pull traffic to the site like email marketing and blogging.
❖ Ensure that all our staff members wear our branded t-shirts and that all our tools
are well branded with our company logo

Our pricing strategy

At Yagibaze, we will keep the prices of our services below the average market rate for all
of our customers by keeping our overhead low, and by collecting payment in advance
from corporate organizations that would hire our services.

In addition, we will also offer special discounts to our customers at regular intervals. We
are aware that there are some off jobs or government contracts that are always
lucrative, we will ensure that we abide by the pricing model that is expected from
contractors or organizations that bid for such contracts.
Sales Forecast
One thing is certain. There would always be corporate organizations and individuals
who would need the services we would be providing.

We are well-positioned to take on the available market in the web hosting industry and
we are quite optimistic that we will meet our set target of generating enough profits
from the first 12 months of operations and grow our company to enviable heights.

We have been able to critically examine the Rwandan web hosting market and we have
analyzed our chances in the industry, and we have been able to come up with the
following sales forecast. The sales projections are based on information gathered in the
field and some assumptions that are peculiar to similar startups in Rwanda.

➢ First year: 1,000,000RWF

➢ Second year: 2,500,000RWF
➢ Third year: 5,000,000RWF

This projection is done based on what is obtainable in the industry and with the
assumption that there won’t be any major economic meltdown and there won’t be any
major competitor offering the same web hosting services as we do within the same
location. The above projection might be lower, and at the same time, it might be higher.

Payment options
The payment policy adopted by Yagibaze will be all-inclusive because we know that
different customers prefer different payment methods as it suits them. Still, at the same
time, we will ensure that we follow the financial rules and regulations of the Republic of
Rwanda.

Start-up budget
The following is what it would cost us to set up Yagibaze in Rwanda:

To do Cost Status

Registering the business in Rwanda 12,500RWF Done

Obtaining licenses and certificates 30,000RWF Done

To do Cost Status

Purchase of reliable cloud server (VPS) and fill 592,000RWF Not yet done
in the required money to resell domains.

The cost of launching a website and integrating 80,000RWF Not yet done
suitable payment methods

Social media marketing campaigns for the first 150,000RWF Not yet done
3 months

Purchase of virtual private network /yearly 106,400RWF Not done

Purchase of email marketing software 109,000RWF Not done

Stationery, business cards, signage and opening 90,000RWF Done

a bank account

Phone and support system setup 30,000RWF Done

Operational cost for the first 3 months (salaries 240,000RWF Not yet done
of employees, payments of bills)

Purchase of furniture and office gadgets 800,000RWF Done

Miscellaneous expenses 100,000RWF Not yet done

Total 2,339,900RWF Only

962,500RWF is
available

Going by the report from the market research and feasibility studies conducted, we will
two million, three hundred thirty-nine thousand, and nine
need about
hundred Rwandan francs (2,339,900RWF) to successfully set up a what we
believe to be the number one web hosting firm in the country.
Generating funding/startup capital for Yagibaze
Finance is a very important factor when it comes to starting a business such as a web
hosting service. Raising start-up capital for our business might not come cheap, but it is
a task that we must go through.

Yagibaze is a private partnership business that is owned and currently financed by

Patrick Yagi. We are open to welcoming any external investor, so we have decided to
restrict the sourcing of the start-up capital to 2 major sources.

Since we are the sole financier of the business, we have decided to adopt the following
means to generate start-up capital for the business:

1. Generate part of the start-up capital from personal savings

2. Generate another part of the start-up capital from friends, extended family
members, and angel investors.

We have been able to generate about nine

hundred sixty-two thousand, five
hundred Rwandan francs (962,500RWF) from personal savings and soft loans
from family members. Now, we are at the final stages of obtaining a loan/investment
facility of one million, four hundred Rwandan francs (1,400,000RWF) from
investors.

Sustainability and expansion strategy

The future of our business will lie in the number of loyal customers that will have, the
capacity and competence of the employees, their investment strategy, and the business
structure.

We know that if some of these factors are missing from our company, then it won’t be
too long before we close the doors.

One of our major goals in starting Yagibaze is to build a business that will survive off its
cash flow without the need for injecting finance from external sources once the
business is officially running. We know that one of the ways of gaining approval and
winning customers over is to offer our web hosting services a little bit cheaper than
what is obtainable in the market and we are well prepared to survive on a lower profit
margin for a while.

Yagibaze will make sure that the right foundation, structures and processes are put in
place to ensure that our staff welfare is well taken of. Our company’s corporate culture
will be designed to drive our business to greater heights, and the training of our
workforce will be always at the top burner.
Checklist
● Brand name availability checkup: Completed
● Conducting feasibility studies: Completed
● Writing of business plan: Completed
● Design of logo and tagline for the business: Completed
● Business incorporation: In progress
● Purchase of the needed furniture, office equipment, software applications,
electronic appliances and facility facelift: In progress
● Creating awareness for the business: In progress
● Generating part of the start-up capital from the founders: Completed
● Opening of corporate bank accounts: In progress
● Opening online payment platforms: In progress
● Application and obtaining taxpayer’s ID: In progress
● Securing a standard office facility for our company: Completed
● Application for business license and certificate: In progress
● Purchase of all forms of insurance for the business: Not yet done
● Drafting of employee’s handbook: Completed
● Drafting of contract documents: Not yet done
● Secure trademark for our products: In progress
● Design and printing of packaging marketing/promotional materials: In progress
● Recruitment of employees: In progress
● Building a standard and world-class internet server: Not yet done
● Creating an official website for the business: Not yet done
● Health and safety and fire safety arrangement: Not yet done
● Establishing business relationships with vendors and key players in various
industries: In progress