Greetings! I've been snooping around for a while now and I'd like to say thanks to everyone for providing tons of useful information.

I do have a few questions so let me get on with my first post on the WHT board!

+ We're setting up a hosting business and we're trying to decide if we should offer domain name registration with companies like Wild West or eNom - or - should we just focus on the hosting and let our clients register their domains on their own.

Some concerns we have about reselling domain names through Wild West or eNom:
- clients leave our site when they reg
- client is billed by a different company/not ours (I believe)
- very low margin due to competition

Some concerns we have about sending our potential clients to other companies (godaddy.com, namecheap.com, etc...) to register their domain name.
- $3.95, $5.95 hosting offers while they are registering their domain names.

What are your thoughts on this?

- EJ

Yes there is not much money in domain registration. But is one of the things which is good for giving away free instead of giving away free hosting. Because its a one time cost for you and they use the domain for a succesful project they will pay and renew. Most people just add up the cost of domain registration to hosting cost and say free domains with hosting. This is just bs which impresses no one.

Yea, you should try using free domain names as a promotion along with hosting. Try it out and if you see that it boosts sales, go with it.

You can get a WWD (http://www.wildwestdomains.com) (GoDaddy) reseller account for $99/year, and then configure the registration site to remove anything that competes with your hosting business. For example, I have mine set up to sell domain registrations (cnobiu), with options of domain parking and proxy registration, but none of the hosting etc. options. And you can even put your own nameservers in as the default "host with us" choices. Bottom line: fairly low cost, minimal effort, doesn't compete with your core business.

Should We Offer Domain Name Reg Along w/our Hosting?

Yes.

Some concerns we have about sending our potential clients to other companies (godaddy.com, namecheap.com, etc...) to register their domain name.
- $3.95, $5.95 hosting offers while they are registering their domain names.

And that is exactly why.

Okay, good info. Let's say we decide to set up a Wild West account and resell domain names from our hosting site.

+ What about the fact that our customers will be directed to a "different" site to register their domain name. How do you explain that to them?

+ What about the billing? Will we be billing them for the cost of their domain name or will they be billed by Wild West Domains? I'm assuming that they will be billed by Wild West. How do you explain that to them?

+ And how much control will we have over the look & feel of the registration page? I've seen a handful of Wild West reseller accounts and they all looked the same. And they don't look anything like the hosting sites. It's like you're going to a completely new site. Can we customize that page, change the toolbar, graphics, etc? Do we have to leave the "Web Page Builder," "Traffic Blazer," "Announcing Federal Copyright Protection," and stuff like that on the page?

Thanks for all the help!

- EJ

Don't stare blind at Wildwestdomains alone. There are many more alternatives available. Enom is very popular to name just one.

Look at what each of them has to offer and make a choice.

Price of a domain
what kind of tlds do they offer (.com .cc .co.uk etc?)
Do they bill the customers or do you bill the customers
Can you set your own price?
Do you have to prepay?
Is there a setup fee for creating an account?
Do they have an API?

etc etc. Don't rush into it. Take your time.

You should offer domains with your hosting. What I did starting out and it worked very well was register the domains for them in an eNom reseller account. They can then access / renew manage through access.enom.com or register rocket. You will find a lot of people wanting you to handle the entire process.

You'll discover you will have to register domains if you are a hosting company. Just comes with the territory.

I confess I haven't done much comparative research on this. But I can tell you that you can get a Wild West Domains reseller account working with very little effort, so if it's not a core part of your business it might make sense for you.


Originally posted by Epcot_Jones
Okay, good info. Let's say we decide to set up a Wild West account and resell domain names from our hosting site.

+ What about the fact that our customers will be directed to a "different" site to register their domain name. How do you explain that to them?Simple -- tell them that they need to register a domain name, and can do it anywhere they want; and that you offer a domain name registration service that they can use if they want to -- the prices are reasonable, and it already knows the nameservers that they'll need to use.


+ What about the billing? Will we be billing them for the cost of their domain name or will they be billed by Wild West Domains? I'm assuming that they will be billed by Wild West. How do you explain that to them?Right ... they'll normally pay for the domain names with a credit card at the time of registration, but you're right that they'll have to pay for them separately from the web hosting, and their credit card statement will list a different merchant name (something fairly generic like "domain name registration", I think). The key thing here is that they're going to be leaving your main site to do the domain registration -- however, I suggest spinning off the domain registration site in a new window, so that your hosting service page will still be there when they're done with the domain registration.


+ And how much control will we have over the look & feel of the registration page? I've seen a handful of Wild West reseller accounts and they all looked the same. And they don't look anything like the hosting sites. It's like you're going to a completely new site. Can we customize that page, change the toolbar, graphics, etc? Do we have to leave the "Web Page Builder," "Traffic Blazer," "Announcing Federal Copyright Protection," and stuff like that on the page?That's probably the biggest drawback to WWD. You can customize some but not most of the look-and-feel stuff. You do get to specify the graphical banner at the top of each page (and a small image at the bottom), and I think you can replace the price table with something else (example 1 (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=malswilm), example 2 (http://www.secureserver.net/default.asp?prog_id=ISPSelect)), but that's not really enough. (These sites use banners effectively: #1 main site (http://www.sitehostz.com)/domain page (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=sitehostz), and #2 main site (http://dfwo.com/)/domain page (http://www.secureserver.net/default.asp?prog_id=dfwo).) You can also embed some HTML in your own site so at least the first page (where you enter a domain name) has your look-and-feel, before jumping to WWD's reseller site (see ecoRegistry.com (http://www.ecoregistry.com/) for a good example of that).

More importantly, you don't have to include all of the other crap on the registration site -- you can suppress products like web hosting, idea register, etc. (Compare these cluttered pages: #1 (http://www.secureserver.net/default.asp?prog_id=bizz), #2 (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=marianips) -- with these: #3 (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=Omnistar), #4 (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=yourname), and #5 (http://www.secureserver.net/?prog_id=PerformersBank).) Unfortunately, whenever WWD adds a new product, they tell resellers about it at the last minute and add it to everyone's site by default, so you have to log in quickly to delete it. But that's mainly just an annoyance.


Thanks for all the help!

- EJ You're welcome. If you want to do more work, I'm sure eNom gives you many more options. But if domain registration is just a sideline to your core hosting business, I think WWD is worth serious consideration.

Now THAT's how to answer a post! Thank you for the detail and the effort. Your information was extremely helpful. I hope others find this thread to be as useful as I have!

Thanks again!

- EJ