In the course of a year or so, I purchased reseller accounts for my sites, all using WHM/cPanel. I observed two basic setups from hosts I've tried:

A. My master reseller domain can be "seen" within WHM; meaning, it is part of the accounts when one uses the "List Accounts" option;

B. My master reseller domain is NOT part of WHM; I cannot "see", much less, modify the features of the main account. I can only "see" accounts I create. Host says the WHM is the master account itself.

I've tried four hosts before and 3 of them uses setup A. I'm trying one right now that uses setup B.

I'm not a Unix/Linux guru or WHM expert, but can anybody give an opinion if setup B is "correct"? As I evaluate things, I seem to notice that something's "wrong" with such a setup. However, I just can't seem to put a finger on it.

Any comments from the experts to enlighten and/or correct my observations? Or at least give me peace of mind on setup B?

Your host forgot to change the ownership of your master account to be owned by itself. It is still owned by root.

Ask them to change the ownership of the master domain to be owned by itself.

The one plus is that the bandwidth and disk quota for that account is probably not being counted against your reseller account total.

Wouldn't count on that. They may track it manually.

Originally posted by sprintserve
Your host forgot to change the ownership of your master account to be owned by itself. It is still owned by root.
I followed your tip and asked them to change the ownership to my master account. They did. No questions.

Apart from not being able to edit my account info/DNS zones, are there any disadvantages to the reseller if their account remains owned by "root"?

Originally posted by John[H4Y]
The one plus is that the bandwidth and disk quota for that account is probably not being counted against your reseller account total.

That was not the case for my account.

Also, my host said if my main account gets suspended via consumption of bandwidth beyond my quota, ALL accounts under it becomes suspended as well.

I'm not sure the mentioned setup B above has something to do with it. Is that really the norm? Shouldn't it be that ONLY the master domain's account will be suspended in such an event, as disk and data transfer consumption by reseller clients are counted against their respective quotas?

There's no real disadvantages to being owned by root.

Setup B has nothing to do with it. It's the same if it is Setup A. And yes it is the norm.

You must remember that reseller clients do not pay to the host. They pay to you. So the host is just interested in knowing the total that you use as a whole entity and not individual account quotas.

'A' Is nice but leaves the door wide open for the client to remove/ edit or totally screw the main account up.

Plus some host use the main account plan to track what your assigned.
Changing the plan features/plan name can make extra work for the host.

'A' is also a 'usage' basis (meaning you can allotcate more then you purchased) while 'B' is a 'allotment' basis, which then helps protect the host from resellers massively overselling thier server and causing issues for all the clients on that server.

Originally posted by Esr Tek
'A' Is nice but leaves the door wide open for the client to remove/ edit or totally screw the main account up. . .Happens more often than we'd hope. :(

We used to use "B" then switch to "A" and so far so good. No one had majorly screw up anything (fingers crossed) End of the day, we operate based more on a usage-based model rather than anything. If they use more, they pay more.

Originally posted by Esr Tek
'A' Is nice but leaves the door wide open for the client to remove/ edit or totally screw the main account up.

Luckily, I cannot delete my own account as the host made sure that won't happen. :D

Originally posted by sprintserve
You must remember that reseller clients do not pay to the host. They pay to you. So the host is just interested in knowing the total that you use as a whole entity and not individual account quotas.

What if, for example, overall quota is 1GB space/10GB data transfer; then main reseller domain was adjusted by reseller to 100MB/1GB just to remind himself that his own site is just part of the entire pie he has to share with his clients.

Using the scenario above, if the host set the accounts to be suspended once the reseller's main domain exceeds its quota, will the reseller's clients also get their sites suspended even if the quotas set for his master domain is just 10% of his total package? :confused:

(I hope my example is clear here.)

Originally posted by FelixSpace
What if, for example, overall quota is 1GB space/10GB data transfer; then main reseller domain was adjusted by reseller to 100MB/1GB just to remind himself that his own site is just part of the entire pie he has to share with his clients.

Using the scenario above, if the host set the accounts to be suspended once the reseller's main domain exceeds its quota, will the reseller's clients also get their sites suspended even if the quotas set for his master domain is just 10% of his total package? :confused:

(I hope my example is clear here.)


Negative, to be honest, the admin *has* to purposely suspend all the resellers accounts. Each accunt is seperate entity and do not effect each other.
To prove this I just changed My accounts bandwidth and it is suspened, however the sub accounts work perfect!!!!

Eric is right.. I just tested it after his post.

I guess I have to clarify this with my host for they said something to the contrary.

Thanks for the information and for the tests you did on your side, guys. They're very much appreciated. :D

I've noticed there seems to be a lot of methods to setting up reseller accounts. Out of curiosity, do you have space alloted to the actual reseller account itself or do you create an account for yourself so you can set your own quotas for your domain?

To other hosts, how do most of you set this up? Do you set up reseller accounts with 0 space but allot them their quotas within the WHM resellers area so they can create their own account with their domain or do you set their domain up as an account with its own space in addition to their quotas within the WHM reseller area?