After reading many threads and from suggestions from many people I have narrowed my wholesale host down to 2. I am now finding it hard to decide, especially with hostopia's sales staff who could sell almost anything!

Basically its like this. I am a uni student with very little money and running an advertising website that does around 5000-6000 Banner impressions per day. I won't put my site URL here because I don't want to be accussed of advertising :)

I want to start reselling hosting. I need to start this risk free, no startup costs, no min contracts, etc. I really liked the look of hostopia becuase of their excellent reputation, many awards, etc. However they have problems.

1. Their packages don't seem to be that competitive. Basic package is $5.25 - 5MB Disk spacs, 1000MB transfer.

2. $750 Startup cost

3. $450 min monthly billing contract.


The other I cam looking at is Venture Online. I have heard nothing but good things on these bd's so am considering them. I actually emailed hostopia and asked what they thought of VO. Their sales person proceded to tell me how they don't have load balancing, etc, etc, they could not support the number of virtual accts that they could, etc, etc. There servers are not as reliable, fast, etc, etc.

I'm sort of going on a bit here so I just want as many people's opinions.

VO or Hostopia?

Thanks in advance

Andrew Drake

This is in no way a criticism of Hostopia as I am not really that familiar with the quality of service. However, Ventures Online consistently gets very positive feedback and has built a very loyal following. Furthermore, they handle even the difficult situations professionally, openly, and smoothly. The biggest example was their relocation of their hosting and the follow up relocation about to take place. Read more on this forum. Go to their forum. Just too large a preponderence of endorsements to ignore.

We will soon be a competitor and can only hope to build the same loyal customer base.

Personally I wonder about the $750 Startup cost and the $450 min monthly billing contract - and why a "uni student with very little money" even considers such a host.

Uni student probably has very little time as well so I would just point out Hosting takes over your life. To start with there will be no holidays, no nights away (you wont have many customers if you say I am on holiday for a week so no support).

Money isn't the only thing required to start hosting. It will take time and commitment.

Originally posted by acdglobal
After reading many threads and from suggestions from many people I have narrowed my wholesale host down to 2. I am now finding it hard to decide, especially with hostopia's sales staff who could sell almost anything!

Andrew Drake

Andrew,

Our solution isn't for every company. It usually makes sense for those companies with an existing web hosting business that is killing them and fortunately for us there are a lot of those.

Our focus has been largely on the Telco, Cableco, ISP, Domain Registrar business and other hosting companies. For these types of companies, they both need and are willing to pay for the solution that we provide because it makes financial sense for them to outsource to us. For those who are just starting out as a reseller it is more difficult to justify especially if you are not planning to buy a dedicated server and using that as your base of comparison.

Like others have said in previous posts, hosting is a full-time business if you want to really succeed at it, otherwise it is smarter to simply be a reseller until you are ready to move up.


Good luck,
Franc

Thanks for your opinions. I have a lot of time and am very dedicated to making it. In no way do I think this is going to be easy money. I don't mind if it "takes over my life" if it means earning good money.

Thanks
Andrew Drake