Reseller Hosting Business...Please Enlighten Me

That's what a reseller account does. With Hostgator, you will have a reseller control panel where you can create hosting accounts. You would simply create a new account and send the new client the info.

I've seen and read that the majority of people like the top companies like Hostgator, GoDaddy, Bluehost, 1&1, Dreamhost, etc. The thing is and that most people don't realize, is that ALL of these companies are truly owned by a parent company named EIG. I only learned of this by mistake when I spoke to a few former reps (techs at each of these places) and after essentially cornering them and browbeating them lol - they admitted that this is the truth. So no matter what large company you choose, like the ones I mentioned above, they are ALL going to be very similar in nature and customer support and features as well. Of all the companies listed in previous posts, LiquidWeb is an independently owned provider. Yes, their customer service is really good, and so is their techs (for the most part) I hosted with them for approximately 2 years, until I went to do an upgrade that was exhaustive, even the techs had no idea why it took so long (nearly 5 days). In order for me to completely finish the, what was supposed to be a quick and painless upgrade to a better server, I had to shut down my server for nearly 24 hours so they could finish the migration. In short - they did what they could, but there was no reason it should have taken so long, even by their own standards.

Now onto what I really wanted to post. I have been doing hosting and reseller hosting now for going on about 13 years altogether. I enjoy it, its fun and when you get things set up nicely - there's not much you have to do. I've tried MANY different hosts, some good, mostly bad or full of security holes and many lacking the support and knowledge to effectively run a true "white label" hosting company. Until this past February - I had my fill with all the garbage out there, shoddy customer support, erroneous information and so on. I decided to finally just "do it" and got my own server. I do NOT recommend doing this unless you truly know what you're doing as most servers are "managed" by the hosting provider, I personally don't need that so I got my own and self-manage it. I've had nothing but praise from clients and the majority of clients I have are resellers and a few regular hosting customers. The majority of my customers are from word of mouth advertising.

The book that was mentioned above is available by me - or you can just search google for the pdf version of it - very simple to find. There are numerous hosting companies out there, for individual and resellers alike and I would say that the first thing you truly need to consider is what is MOST important to you? Support? Price? Space? My personal priority is support, then space, then price. You'll run across providers that offer unlimited space (yes, I do too) as its a way to market to people who are concerned about that - but I can 100% ASSURE you that my servers are NOT oversold like many other reseller providers! That is where things get dangerous for you as a reseller. Service is degraded and can cause you some serious downtime and damage your reputation and trust in your customers. I was hosted on LiquidWeb with my own server, paying about $450/mo for one server and now I'm on my own, self-managed server paying much less.

If you're looking for a "full setup" mean one click builds and poof everything is done, there really is none, just like there's no magic WSO that will make you millions with the click of a mouse just once! It doesn't exist - sorry. You definitely have to shop around and seek out the good ones from the bad. Search for reviews online, compare price and ask lots of questions. As I said, theres LOTS to choose from out there and when you find that "sweet spot" you will know you're in the right place. I strive to give every single one of my customers, regardless what they pay the same premium support and several other warriors who are hosted with me know this to be the case. Communication is key and so is trust and reliability. I'm not here to pitch my services, just to let you know what I've experienced in all the time I've been doing it and I've lost sites, full accounts because that reliability wasn't in place!

Please feel free to ask any questions and I hope my personal past experience is informative so you can be make a wise decision. Good luck.

Matt

Don't forget about supporting those customers. Sure, it's pretty easy to get 500 customers when you're selling pennies on the dollar services like some of these companies for "$0.98" per month. Keeping those customers happy isn't as easy as it sounds & when it gets screwed up, it makes more headaches for us companies who take our business serious.

Generally, the cheaper the service, the more those customers expect. Don't compete on price, it'll get you nowhere. Take a look at the hosting "companies" for sale over on web hosting talk - most of which are merely kids who think this industry is a get rich overnight business & then fail when they get in over their heads..can't afford second months server bills, don't know a lick about security, configuring servers, troubleshooting etc.

Regarding pricing & cheap junk - Example: Take a look at the hosting offers section & some of the older WSO's with "dollar" hosting - where are they now? Pages upon pages of complaints, host has disappeared etc etc. It's not a sustainable business model. If you're thinking of "trying" it, I'd advise against that as well - you're playing around with customer data.