Hi, I currently have my website and email hosted with a company here in Ireland. I have also recommended all of my clients to order their domains and hosting with the same company over the last 10 years. However the hosting company's service has deteriorated significantly over the last 6 months. Some of my client's websites are going down for hours with no explanation and they take up to 5 days to respond to support tickets... in which they finally try to blame everyone else other than themselves... so time to move on... I have two issues so i thought i would keep them in the same thread / post. 01 - New Hosting I want to order a new (shorter) domain name for my company with a new hosting company. Obviously i will have a new website and email address for my company, so i will need to update all of my clients. I am not so worried about my old url / website, however what would be the best way to manage / forward my old email address to my new email address, baring in mind that i want to cancel my hosting with my old hosting provider. Would it be best to move my old domain name over to the new hosting company and add it to my new account and then set up an email forwarder, and then cut everything with my old hosting company? 02 - Master Hosting As i mentioned above, i reccommended the hosting company to all of my clients. Some people are telling me that i should create a large / parent hosting account and then sell / manage all of my clients under this parent hosting account, so that i can charge them the hosting fee instead of the company. Can anyone offer and advice or information on this. I need to make sure my client's website have adequate resources / speed / memory / bandwidth etc... Thanks in advance for your help.
I tend to agree with #2. I rent a VPS with these folks https://www.iwfhosting.net/ In well over a year now I have only spoken to 2 different people. No wait times for anything and they are so friendly its frankly alarming. I typically suggest folks start with a reseller and scale it up accordingly until paying for a VPS is entirely trivial to do. hope that helps a bit, Nigel
A Reseller or VPS is the way to go for now. If you go with a VPS, I advise you to get one that is managed unless you are an expert at server management. Get one with cPanel if you can as that is the easiest to use control panel. A Reseller shared hosting or VPS will come with WHM and cPanel for your customers. Each of your customers can have their own cPanel and be able to upload stuff to their accounts, create add-on domains, etc. And if you get something like cPanel, you can easily migrate all your customer accounts to another host with cPanel if you need to move everything. That is something you want to consider just in case. So you can relatively easily take all your customers with you if you need to and if they have their DNS with you, they may not even notice. If most of your clients are in Ireland or the UK, you are best to find a host in that area to minimize latency issues. As far as having enough disk space/resources/bandwidth, that is going to depend on how much your customers are using now. That is something you are going to have to find out by asking them.
I agree that a reseller account would be the way for you to ho. Maybe a VPS if you want to manage your own server. Does your current provider offer a control panel of some kind? If not I would suggest looking at acPanel provider. Good luck.
OH FFS bro. That is the last place you want to host anything. I don't know why I bother with this place anymore. Nigel
I would frankly be here all day explaining that. Several pages of up upsells, weird control panels, terrible support and about 300 other things. I can find threads from years ago explaining this stuff. last I checked anytime someone ran a 301 redirect it actually showed on google as 302(another deal breaker though they may have fixed that.) They are too huge. Hostgator, Bluehost, Ipage. all those folks are a full blown nightmare to have to deal with. The only reason I register stuff there is I already had domains there. http://chriseggleston.com/wordpress-hosting-why-not-godaddy/ http://lifehacker.com/5794507/how-to-jump-ship-from-godaddy-to-a-better-web-host There are hundreds of those. It will take me a sec to finds threads from DP where I am in screaming about those folks. I didn't drop an affiliate link to my host for a reason. That was not a sales pitch. Though, same if not better hardware, and immediate support from 1-2 people. VS. waiting hours for an email response. Nigel
GoDaddy is notorious for overloading their shared servers to the point everything slows to a crawl. A basic Reseller will be on a shared server, at least with other Reseller customers. I have read good things about GoDaddy for things like Dedicated servers where you have the entire server to yourself so if anyone is overloading it, it is you. But for anything on a shared server, you are best to look elsewhere. Does GoDaddy have a data center in Ireland or the UK? Hosting your own websites across the ocean from your visitors is one thing, but to expect all of your clients to want the same thing is another matter. Also, if you get a VPS with cPanel, you will have the same Reseller tools available to you in WHM/cPanel as you would on a Reseller plan. WHM/cPanel will do most of the work of managing the server for you (updating OS software, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB for security fixes, etc.). And if you go with a managed VPS, you can just submit a support ticket and have technical support do things for you or help bail you out of a jam if you get into trouble. Do they do Cyber Monday specials in Europe? If so, that would be a good time for you to get a deal.
I'm in the same boat. I have a few shared hosting (1and1 and go dadday) 1and1 is not bad but my shared go-daddy hosts seem to load pretty slow. I'm debating finding a quicker host to speed site load times.. Do you guys have any recommendations? Should i just upgrade my 1and1 package and migrate them over or look into a new host? Side questions, do you buy domains through your host or go with a 3rd party?
Well, if you are going to ask. I strongly suggest my host. Those folks blow my mind repeatedly. At least when I have to talk to them. I still register domains with GD though. As I mentioned, its convenient to have them in one place. hope that helps, Nigel
I buy my domains through Namecheap and I do not host with Namecheap. There is no need to buy domains through a host but some people prefer to have everything in one place. If you are going to get another host, today is the day to do it. Deals of 75% - 90% off. There is one host that has a recurring deal for 50% off for life on shared. I can't remember the name right now. But others are offering 75% - 90% off the invoice, so you can get a year for 75% off. I use A Small Orange as my host. They are great. Page loads are fast. They are not an "unlimited" host. And that is why their servers are not overloaded. It depends on what you are looking for. Quality or quantity? What are you paying for your different shared hosting accounts? ASO is running a Double RAM and storage promo (for life) so for $30 a month you can get a 2-core VPS with 4GB of RAM, 1 TB of data transfer and 60 GB of disk space with cPanel (2 IP addresses, fully managed VPS, 2 months up front then month-to-month with no long term contracts, double RAM and storage is yours for as long as you keep the package). Depending on how many different shared packages you have, you could consolidate everything onto a VPS and never have slowness like you have with GD.
If you can yield 2-3 clients per month (Instead of referring them to someone else), then it would definitely be wise to start your own mini-startup hosting company. You don't even need a robust website, just something simple with maybe a control panel if you want to give that option. Heck, you don't even need that. I would strongly recommend staying away from Godaddy's reseller hosting. Over a dozen of my clients this year were previously were on Godaddy's hosting / reseller services. Needless to say, they're much happier now that they're not with them. Here's an idea. 1-3 clients per month, get a VPS with cPanel. 5-10 clients per month (Very good growth!), get a dedicated server. If you're just getting less than 1 client every 2-4 months, just refer them to a good provider with an affiliate program. On a side note, Bilizo mentions A Small Orange. They were good, but they were acquired by Endurance International Group. Look what happened to Host Gator. Not to say that will happen to ASM, but it could, and quality will go down as they try to make their business profitable. Anyway, good luck finding your "Perfect Host."