Reseller's are to some extend dependent upon their hosts for their own business.

To what extent can it be a "partnership"?

Versus a simple matter of outsourcing services?

Resellers can certainly help advance their hosts business...
and doing so can if they are open about where they host..enhance their own reputation.

Yet the bottom line is that the owners of the reseller's hosting company..have the responsibility and the right to make decisions all of which will hve a great impact on resellers.

The Reseller is a customer not a business partner. His or her first responsibility is to his or her customers .

As is clear from these forums resellers come and go they move hosts, or move to new servers.

I was looking at the questions from people considering a current host...They asked a HOST of questions and expressed the sort of stuff that concerns them about hosts and past experiences.

The owner, Adrian simple addressed each question in a straight foward and direct manner. In fact even when people have asked in a manner I would consider pretty obnoxious or even challenging...the staff just answers.

They act as if these are customers and folks are entitled to ask and get answers . If they feel misundertood..They clarify but never are they nasty.

I know that what is said in their private office or bedroom may (or may not) be different;-)

What they do not do is vent at their customers. Or expect them to act as business partners who share the responsibility and the profits, or loss of the business.

Buisness Partners are another matter as they represent the company not themselves as individuals and the companies interest.

To what extent does the interest of the company and those of resellers correspond?

Where is the overlap..and where is there friction?

Best
Renee

Then the relationship can be very much like a partnership and the two parties are very interdependent. For instance, someone like httpme is very dependent on the success of their resellers and has shown the commitment to make their resellers successful. The relationship is far more than provider/customer.

Yes, I agree it can be!

Yet, what makes it successful is that httpme provides the service if which its clients have paid.

Loyalty to them is based on their track record of reliability along with long term experiences of clients.

And this would free things up I would imagine for other kinds of mutually beneficial relations

But here is the rub..

If trackrecord is the criteria..where does that leave new business in terms of resellers?

If we all went to those around longer//no start-ups would have much of a chance.

And given how many resellers (I am not among them) hope to move into hosting themselves...something about this criteria seems off


In another thread I mentioned Bluewho and Simpli as hosts I was considering/with...and all the comments were positive. I was a bit surprised that did not make me squirm. After all I had heard and promoted such positive comments about another host ...and they turned out really unstable

So I really had to think about if this was really different or if they just charged more :):D

What became clear to me is that it these comments were different BECAUSE not of the comments themselves..but because of the longer track record. While it is possible for a host runnibg server only 6 months or a year to be really good..... but without track record it is hard to know...in fact many may be like I was..impressed with speed of response after being at a realy large company where a 6 hour response time was impressive.

Because of this I overlooked not having email for weeks and other problems heh

It does take a certain amount of time to evaluate a host...but httpme, simpli and bluewho all had first and second years as well:)

And sometimes folks who start out without great result full responsibility for its success and what good or bad (data centers for instance) come their way and not expect the resellers to shoulder the burden as partners.

With the more established companies of course problems will come up from time to time ..Yet on a daily bais the issue is not adequacy of basic services or are there backups ...

And I know that despite being down really rarely some hosts really do refund clients when major services are down or unrelible over a long period of time..or offer them free extentions and such to pass on to their clients.

I guess what I am coming to is that a deeper partnership should not be expected until the basic service to customer issues are addressed.

The first rub..comes when services are inconsistent or unreliable.

(hmmm perhaps the next would be competition ? or????

The success of the host depends on the success of their clients. The host that offers reseller accounts should be the best of the best when it comes to securing a server, server updates, server uptime, backups, etc. The host that sells reseller accounts should have the expertise, patience, and resources to educate their clients on how to run a reseller business, marketing advice, advertising advice, general hosting knowledge, etc. The host that sells reseller accounts could consider it a partnership because their continued success depends on the success of their resellers.

As a reseller, I have little to no loyalty to my providers when it comes to providing services for my business. If they have trouble securing a server, keeping reliable backups, too much down time, etc, it's time to move on to a better provider. The relationship with my supplier is nothing compared to the relationship with my end clients.

Why on earth would a reseller try to build a business with a newer host that doesn't have a proven track record I will never know....