Hi there I have a few clients who I know personally and been hosting all their sites under my account. Pretty much, I handle their accounts; emails, hosting, etc. I've been thinking of changing my business system, and had a look into reselling where the client can log into their cpanel accounts, and create their own emails, password, etc. I don't know much about reselling, however, I would appreciate some great advice here. 1. Is reselling the way to go for clients? 2. What would recommend for reselling? 3. What kind of hosting would you need e.g. bandwith, etc? I think that's all for now. I will keep you posted if anything else comes to mind. Thanks in advance CHEERS
reselling would definitely be the way to go. You won't have to worry about server management or any control panel licensing. And you'll be able to get help from your provider. As for space/bandwidth, you should be able to upgrade as you grow so starting with let's say 5gb space and 50gb bandwidth should be more than enough. Unlike Dedicated servers it is much easier to upgrade reseller hosting accounts.
What has worked best for us and designers is a partnership whereby they bring us the hosting business and they do the web design. This of course works in reverse. No confusion, not referral issues, etc.. Just a good all around partnership that benefits both by bringing each other business. It also gets the designer free hosting for their site, and much better support since both host and designer work together. Less finger pointing equals much happier clients!
WOW! Thanks guys, this valuable information. That sounds interesting, but would have to ask a hosting company for partnership? Does that mean door knocking until someone says yes?? I'm not sure where to start njoker555 + jonmaster - Is 5gb space and 50gb bandwidth per account, or will that account host for all my clients? I noticed the price ($22.50/month) link is a lot more than the some of the unlimited hosting disk space out there, for a very low price. Ok, I'm very please that reselling is the way to go, but I need to get my head around it. I will do some more research until I fully understand how it all works.
I meant that to be your space/bandwidth allocation. You should be able to break it up for your own clients. The two numbers were just examples.
I see! But the example you gave was a similar package for a resellers host too lol. Ok, let's say I bought a resellers host package the exact same as 5gb space and 50gb bandwidth, and I have 5 clients. If I wanted to evenly break it up, would it look like this: 1gb disk space and 10gb bandwidth per client?
You can do that but most resellers should let you oversell. Meaning you can promise 10gb space even though you have 5gb. But in a reseller environment, it's ok to oversell a little because as I mentioned earlier, it's easier to upgrade your allocation on a reseller than a dedicated server. Same goes for bandwidth but you should be reasonable. Don't promise hundreds of gigabytes of space and take advantage because even a dedicated server can run out of that space very quickly.
Its a bad idea such as mortage loan that coz the current crisis. Which mean you use the resource than you don't have. At the end of the day,it will not only affect the single client that overused the resource. But in fact,it will affect all your whole client that hosted at the same reseller account when you upstream host suspend your account.
Hmm..interesting comments, both are valid points. However, I guess its like gambling. The gamble is, now I want to oversell, and then eventually upgrade when I have more clients. Then again, it could back fire as mentos mentioned. At this stage, I don't have a lot of clients, so I will have to weigh it up and see from there. Thanks guys
I'm suggesting the OP not buy oversold space/bandwidth himself so I'm not sure how he would use resources he doesn't have. I agree this would be a problem if the host that manages the entire server oversold but that's not what I suggested above. And since you can't overuse resources, there is no need for a host to suspend anything. If the OP goes for hard limits and is careful about what he sells and how much resources he uses, he should be fine. I'm not suggesting he go out and buys a 100gb space for a $1 and then offer unlimited everything - that would cause the issues you've stated.
Actually, for the starter Over sell is the profit. Oversell should be a calculated risk with success. You can be very sure that your clients will not exceed the diskspace and bandwidth. As you know for any small business website it will take only 50mb per site and at the most 10gb bandwidth. Assuming your clients are only business websites and personal websites. As their site grows you can modify the settings in the reseller control panel. You could also upgrade your reseller package with your hosting provider at any time. this is how you have to grow RESELLER PACKAGES, VPS, DEDICATED SERVER HOPE YOU GET IT you could also try reseller package from hostgator.com they are cool
Thanks guys, I got better understanding now. I have one last question, is it a lot better to sign up for a reseller account and host all my clients sites there, and also sign up for a cheap web hosting account and host all my own personal or business sites (excluding clients)?
When you get a reseller account, you can create a sub account for yourself and just host your own stuff there. No need to get a separate account, it'll only add to the cost.
Both also ok. But if you go for the later. Then the client will question your webhost reliability about why you don't host your own site at your own reseller account.
lol..why didn't I think of that before. I agree, it is better to host my personal site on my own reseller account This is awesome, I've learnt so much in these 2days, and I can't thank you guys enough. Cool! Now I have to figure out a way to change my hosting with all my clients, and all their domain names to my reseller account Too easy CHEERS
Ask your current host, they should be able to help you transfer all the sites. But you should take your own backup before any of that happens, just in case. Things can go wrong at any time.
Sooner once you have more customers I recommend you shift to the VPS. VPS will give you a kind of independence. That will be much better as for your own web site and for the web sites of your customers.