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Web site hosting reseller 1

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LDaveM

Vendor
Feb 12, 2002
336
US
I am a reseller of web hosting and I am looking for a new host. What is most important features to look for in selecting a new company?
Thanks,
Dave
 
Check that they're established and have been succesfully in business for some years.

Search in some of the many webmaster forums for opinions on your chosen company.

I can personally recommend hostroute.com. I'm just coming up to the one year mark with them and the service has been fantastic. Very cheap and reliable.
 
For a reseller package, I'm assuming you are selling to customers. The following are in no particular order, it is up to you to decide which are priorites for you.

Reliability
Support
Price
Features
Flexibility

Basically, if you are selling to your customers, you can only be as good as the host you choose. If you choose a host that takes 24 hours to respond to your support requests, your clients are going to have to wait over that amount of time for resolution of a problem and it can reflect badly on you.

Test the hosts response time by sending them a few questions in an e-mail. Pay particular attention to whether they fully answer your questions, how quick you receive a reply and how friendly they are etc.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
Wullie,
This is what I get now, plus my own names servers and each of my clients have their own IP address.
Many of the hosting companies I have looked at don't offer the IP addresses. How important are they?
I get all of this for $8.97US per site per month.
Thanks for responding
Dave


Disk Storage 100MB
Data Transfer 300MB
Email POP3 Boxes 25
Email Autoresponders Yes
Email Forwarding Yes
Web Mail Yes
Online Site Manager Yes
Detailed Web Traffic Statistics Yes
Raw Log Files Yes
Your Own CGI Local Directory Yes
Unlimited FTP Yes
FormMail Yes
Perl 5/PHP4/PHP3 Yes
Server Side Includes (SSI) Yes
30 Day Guarantee Yes
Technical Support Guarantee Yes
99% Uptime Guarantee Yes
Phone Support Yes
Daily Backups Yes
MS FrontPage Extensions Yes
Secure Server (SSL) Yes
Active Server Pages (ASP) Yes
EZ Install Counters Yes
MySQL Database Yes
Site Search Engine Yes
Mime Type Support Yes
Password Protected Directories Yes
Mailing List 10
Anonymous FTP Yes
Shopping Cart No
 
Dave,

Are you actually using a reseller account or are you just purchasing extra accounts for each client.

Regarding the IP addresses, don't worry about looking for this unless you are running SSL on each domain.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
Wullie,
Looks as if I'm purchasing extra accounts for each client, doesn't it?
Is this a disadvantage or is it just costing me more then I need to be paying?
Dave
 
Basically, with a proper reseller account you are allocated a set amount of quotas. Lets say that you are allocated 1GB space and 10GB bandwidth.

You take that amount and you create your own packages from that. You then can create/add domains to your account without any input from your host. The biggest advantage is that you don't pay more because you add another client's domain.

Currently you are paying $8.97 a month per client. Lets say you ended up with 50 clients, that works out as $448.50 per month. If you had a reseller package, you could get that same setup for a fraction of that price.

Our current setup works the same as you do it, we don't offer reseller packages. Because of demand from client's though, we are introducing real reseller plans within the next month or so. I'm not promoting our services here (It would be hard when we don't offer the plans yet), I'm just giving you an idea of how things work between both ways and why both are good in different circumstances.

With a few sites you would be probably be cheaper the way you currently do it, but when you get to 3+ sites it would most likely work out cheaper with a real reseller plan.

I do have a few comments about the plans you are using though. [smile]

1) Disk:Bandwidth - Find a host with a better disk to bandwidth ratio. 1:3 means that you are very likely to go over your bandwidth quota on even a low traffic site. A more realistic ratio is 1 disk to 10 bandwidth. So for every 100MB of disk space, look for about 1GB of bandwidth.

2) PHP3 - This is outdated. Your host running PHP3 means that they are very likely to be behind on security updates relating to PHP. You are talking about a setup that is at least a few years old.

3) Anonymous FTP - This is why your host offers a dedicated IP addres, or one of the reasons anyway. If you don't use it, there is potential for this to be a security risk that is unnecessary.

The best thing to do is look through the package and see what parts you actually need. Don't be fooled by loads of options that you don't use.

Find a host that offers everything you need and within your budget. Contact the host with presales questions, whether by phone, chat, email or whatever but make sure they are friendly and pretty quick to respond.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
Wullie,
I have 40 sites that I host. My present hosting company, I think is going to raise my costs, not sure when, but it is coming.
Are you at fresh look?
Thanks,
Dave
ppkhosting.com
 
Dave,

If you have 40 accounts and you are still paying that price for the package above, it is time to get out. If you said you had a 100% uptime SLA then I would think otherwise but for a 99% SLA that is a very high price to pay.

I'm not sure what you mean about me being at Fresh Look, I own the company. [smile]

If you want help looking for a new reseller, give me a shout. I'm on the live chat most of the time.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
Wullie,
Thanks for all the help. I'll get in touch with you soon.
Dave
 
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