I get the feeling (and always have) that people prefer the "Parent" host to resellers ..is there a reason?

Do you think since people are willing to do alot of digging to discover if a host is a reseller, that a reseller should just say they are a reseller? The tone is almost like if your a reseller and dont say it your hiding something...but if you do say it then people think your not a "real" host.

Its kind of a Damned if you do Damned if you dont sort of thing.

I don't think that the majority of web host clients really care if their host is a reseller, the owner of the NOC or renting a dedicated server. They DO care, however, if the line is fast, the servers quick and the technical service excellent.

If someone is a reseller and match the above, plus has good prices... why should anyone refrain themselves from using their services?

Yes, being a reseller is a bad thing








if you're a bad reseller. Otherwise, it doesn't matter to any reasonable person. In fact, some resellers are better, even cheaper, than the "parent" host.

I think the only worry people would have might be the longevity of the company hosting their site. A reseller has made a minimal investment in equipment and infrastructure, so may be perceived as more likely to disappear at a moment's notice. A "parent" host with their own NOC on the other hand has made a substantial investment in equipment, infrastructure, and generally real estate/staff too. Therefore they're seen to be a more stable proposition.

I agree with Felix though that most people couldn't give two hoots as long as the server is stable and fast.

Speedie.

Even more Speedie... I know of 2 resellers that began with a reselling package, then bought a dedicated, then 2, 3, 4, and they are now planning to _build_ their own NOC.

Sooo everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone don'T have a million to begin with :)

Absolutely Felix - I'm about to become an Alabanza host myself ;)

I think that some people may well perceive a reseller as a less stable entity financially though, no matter what the rights and wrongs of it.

Speedie.

Resellers can be good and can be bad. Parent/Top-Level hosts can be good, can be bad. I always like to go as far up the chain as possible, since for example if I sign-up for HostXYZ.abc and they are responsive and highly reliable then I'm happy. I could sign-up with a reseller who resells for HostXYZ.abc and I could be equally happy since they are committed and provide a good service. However the reseller could be lousy and not care about their customers, and hence I'm unhappy. There could also be resellers selling for HostHell.XXX and they could be genuine but since HostHell.XXX sucks they can't pass on a good service to the client.

Let play with probability, in a 50/50 environment.

Signup with HostXYZ.abc (not resllers): 50% good 50% bad.
Signup with HostABC.dty (not resllers): 50% good 50% bad.

Signup with HostReseller.dfg who either reseller of any of the above. First you got a 50% chance of whether the reseller is good or not. Then you got a 50% chance that they are selling for a reliable hosting company.

Probability favour the parent host.



Enough of that anyway,

Resellers can be only be good if the parent hosting company is tecnicially good. The comment 'resellers offer more personal (faster) support' is worthless if when you send them an e-mail, and they've got to forward a tech request to the hosting company who take 2-3 days to reply. Also, some (minority) resellers move from company to company in search of the bigger margin, and you get carried along with them, resulting in disruption, confusion and more likely than not changes in plan specification/billing. Reselling also lets novices break into the market, take your money and leave you stranded in a few weeks time.

I would have to know the in and out of a reseller before commiting to them, I don't know why they don't just advertise the fact their reselling, I'd find out anyway and would help others find out. If then I am satisified that either they can offer me a better price, better terms and more support than I'll go with them.

Be careful.


These are my opinions. Some resellers are great, some aren't. It's a gamble but if you're ever unsure come back and post the url/company and we'll look into for you. Before I get flamed, I thought that a clear balanced was needed and people need to know the possibility of what can happen.

All in good faith,

Matt.

You are right Stephanie...
For example, currently our (own) reseller packages are aimed mainly at web designers, not bulk domain resellers.

But we have 'normal' resellers as well... theyr prices are similar to ours, and they offer as fast or faster service than ours regarding the issues that their clients are experiencing.

The only real bad side of being a reseller is that when the server crash (or anything bad happen) you are not in there to fix the problem (as I do when anything bad happen)

I agree with Stephanie, be prepared for the question and don't lie when it comes. Usually after they ask the "are you one" question, there are two that follows:

Who do you resell for?
Why should I pick you over them?

You need to have answers for these two as well.

I've seen several resellers that had better customer support than their uplines. Faster reponse times and better tracking methods.

Like someone else said, you have to start somewhere and not everyone has thousands of dollars to chunk into a new server.

Another point to remember is that those people who know how to figure out if you are a reseller are much fewer than the people who don't have a clue what a reseller is, much less how to figure out if you are one.

When we were resellers, I never lost a client because of the fact that we were one. Most didn't care.

Originally posted by Duster
In fact, some resellers are better, even cheaper, than the "parent" host.

Originally posted by Felix
But we have 'normal' resellers as well... their prices are similar to ours...

Unfortunately, I am a little lost on how is it possible that some resellers can be even cheaper than the "parent" host?

Would that mean that they are subsidizing the cost of the service they are reselling from their own pockets?... perhaps because they expect to be recompensated for some other service they provide to the same client, eg. web design, site maintanence, etc.?

Learner

Learner,

If the parent host offers a large discount and the reseller chooses not to pass it all on, the reseller becomes the cheap option.

Example:

Host sells a "Gold" account for $20 but lets resellers have it for $10 (50% discount).

Reseller decides to sell the account for $15, therefore still making a 50% mark-up (we'll ignore cost factors like CC charges etc). Reseller is undercutting the parent for the same account but still making a healthy margin.

Resellers may sometimes take a smaller margin than they could in order to attract more customers - the idea being that these customers will take advantage of value-added services such as design or programming.

Best wishes,
Speedie.

Learner,

Here is how. I have a bulk plan where you can get 20 accounts for $125, which works out to $6.25 per account. Our cheapest plan (that WebAuthorities offers) is currently $15 per month. So as you can see a reseller with the bulk plan could offer an account for $10.00 per month which is below what we charge.

Originally posted by Dana
I get the feeling (and always have) that people prefer the "Parent" host to resellers ..is there a reason?

Do you think since people are willing to do alot of digging to discover if a host is a reseller, that a reseller should just say they are a reseller? The tone is almost like if your a reseller and dont say it your hiding something...but if you do say it then people think your not a "real" host.

Its kind of a Damned if you do Damned if you dont sort of thing.





Dana,

I agree with you. Before I started working for JTAN, I resold for Communitech and JTAN ... communitech being my high plan and JTAN being my low plan. When I started off, I believe I had one or two customers while not "mentioning" I was a reseller, but not really giving other info. When I changed the site around, stated I resold, etc, etc, I quickly got many more orders.

Although one key was that my prices were the same as JTAN and Communitech. I didn't make as much extra money, but I got more customers because of it. The thing I offered that Communitech couldn't offer was support. Communitech had thousands of customers, and I had about 10. I could much more easily serve them and help them out. That's the main idea of being a reseller.

If someone wants to find out you are a reseller, they'll find out. I personally think it's better just to say it upfront and list reasons as to why they should go through you instead of the parent company. Try to offer something special that the parent company can't offer, a niche. E.g. better support, HTML help, additional CGI scripts, whatever.

Hope this helps! :)

By the way, Stephanie is one of the good resellers. She works for Hosting Matters (http://hostmatters.com).

I have five sites hosted with Hosting Matters. Their tech support is excellent. I couldn't have gotten my new vBulletin board up without them. I give them a big thumbs up! And no, they don't pay me for this, darnit.

I'm not sure how Stephanie is "one of the good resellers", but... I knows she works for hostmatters, errrr... maybe she resells for them?

Tiny bit of clarification: Stephanie is actually the co-owner (with me) of Hosting Matters, not a reseller. Just so there's no confusion, as well, anyone who leases a server directly from Alabanza is not a reseller, as Alabanza does not provide hosting services.

Having said that, the general drift of this thread is right. There are good hosts and bad hosts, whether they are resellers or not. My hypothesis is that people tend to associate "resellers" with "bad" simply because they perceive resellers as having less control and being more likely to screw people over as they don't have as significant an investment as someone who has poured some money into leasing or colo-ing a server.

When I started researching I had absolutely no idea about resellers, unlimited bandwidth etc. Particularly resellers. It's not until I actually started hanging out around forums, visiting sites like WHL and HostSearch and asking questions that I realised there was a difference between reselling and being the parent host.

My initial impressions (as a newbie) was that it would be better going direct to the parent host, since they literally 'control' the hardware, support, etc. Of course, that perception soon warped a bit. To tie it in with Annette's hypothesis, she's pretty much on the mark, since most newbies to hosting will ask, 'Why are they reselling instead of being a parent host?'

My current viewpoint is that you should do plenty of research, ask the reseller hard questions, do some lookups on WHOIS info and IP blocks and see how honest they are. If they are honest, then it's usually a good sign.

Quite frankly, at the moment I really don't mind going with a reseller or a parent host, as long as both can assure me of some decent uptime and speed, and good support when required.

along the same lines as BC....

in the days of yore... *chuckle* I registered my first domain name (same one I use here still). Got one of those webspace/domain name registration combos. I knew little, and they everything - all was good.

Eventually I moved on, did some research, found out about reselling etc etc - and had an opinion! Like almost all people I figured being hosted by a reseller couldn't be as good as the parent company, nor being hosted by 'leased' servers be as good as the actual NOC. So I moved to what I considered was top of the food chain. I had my domain placed at addr.com, just picked over *****. *lmao*

Now I'm sure most people here know what a bad idea THAT was - both of them being half-assed at best! When the support dried up I was out of there, and now I'm hosted at a small (well smaller than ***** etc), server with professional, knowlegable support. As their upstream is Alabanza the hardware end of it is fine, and I've never seen my site run better for uptime, or speed. Closer than that is them, with a lot of time and consideration spent looking after us hostee's.

The big NOC's that host webspace are all good and well IF they spend the money of a huge support dept. Few if any do however, and most have gotten out of the business to resell or leave servers to other people to DO have the time and energy to do it right. I'll personally never look anywhere past smaller hosts ever again, and even have my OWN reseller account I'm looking at setting up soon (time permitting).

Leasers and resellers get a bad rep from a small percentage of 15 y.o. weekenders out there, but most are hard working people who sleep little, don't eat right, and should shave more - all because they are striving hard to carve out a business for themselves.

I used to have a differing opinion and am the first to admit my mistake. I can well understand why people wouldn't openly say 'I'm a reseller' due to the general opinion of such (by some). As most resellers seem to move onto leasing, and maybe even NOC status, it going to be harder for them to come clean about it, as that person asking may mean the difference between making rent that week. Once you build a client base it would be a lot easier. Even in design it's much the same thing. Some people will undercut themselves way too hard to get a deal in the beginning, not realising their actual value through honest confident, bidding of their talents.

Anyway this is kinda becoming a babble..... *lol*

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net

Sorry about the confusion. I didn't mean that Stephanie was a reseller for Hosting Matters. I meant that Hosting Matters was a reseller and Stephanie works for Hosting Matters. I didn't know she was a co-owner.

I also didn't know that companies that lease servers from Alabanza and sell hosting services were not considered resellers.

So, let me rephrase my praise.

Stephanie is one of the good hosts. She is a co-owner of Hosting Matters. She and Annette have an excellent company.

I also agree with the drift of the thread. You can't lump all resellers into one group and call them good or bad. For example, my company resells through Hosting Matters.

Last year my company had a net income of $3 million. That doesn't sound big in dot com dollars, but we've been in business since 1955, and we'll probably outlive 99% of the dot coms.

So, in spite of the fact that I have almost no money invested leasing or colo-ing a server, I'm not going anywhere. But I'm not here selling. Oops. I am here selling, just not myself. I'm selling Hosting Matters. They're awesome.

The point is that you need to do some research. The best thing you can do is browse the forums like you are doing and see who has a good reputation (like Stephanie and Annette).

One thing that is funny about the Internet is that not all of the old rules apply anymore.

For instance, do you want to go with a host or reseller that has been in business less than two years? Well, if you eliminate hosting companies formed in the past two years, you won't have many left from which to choose. Even though the Internet has been around since Gore invented it in 1970 something, most of its growh has occurred during the past few years.

James, no problem. Thanks for the boost. :)

And you have a point about companies started in the past two years - if you took those out, the list of companies would shrink from the over two thousand it is right now to what would probably be an easier list for people to get through.





[Edited by Annette on 09-15-2000 at 08:50 PM]

DaveyP, What, you are crazy. j/k. Who's your daddy?

Chris, I suggest you delete your post now that Matt's kicking *****'s white lilly ass around :D

Have I missed something? Who's Chris? Who's DaveyP?

Uhmm... What?! I thought...... uhmmmmmm..... errrrrrrr...... :confused:

Mwhaahhahaahahhaahahaha!!!

*pokes a VERY pointy finger in BC's ribs*

screwed up did ya? *huge ass chuckle*

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net
*enjoying tonight far too much*

Ahhhhhhhh......... Shaddup..... ;)

Originally posted by Annette
Tiny bit of clarification: Stephanie is actually the co-owner (with me) of Hosting Matters, not a reseller.

Are you sure? Has anyone seen Stephanie in the same room as Annette? Is it the Casper / Richie Rich thing of two people being the one in reality?? *lol* Just kidding...

I do know poor Steph fields a lot of the tech support while Annette gets to play here! Give Steph a night off and let her play online instead of looking after us clients. I want to see her plans for nerdgirl come to fruition. I seem to remember a comic in the works?

Seriously though, have you two every considered doing something like http://www.lynda.com/ but aimed at webhosting instead of graphics? Harking back to that earlier thread of 'women in business' before it went sour. Amongst the photoshop crowd that domain is one of the top 10 'must reads' online. A nifty, flashy kick-ass resource center wouldn't go astray, don't you agree? And the girls always do it better than the boys. :)

Got you all thinking?

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net