i'm about to start my web hosting business and i'm really have to admitt that all of those came from a scratch and with your help it became a company :)
the only thing is missing is the domains for my customers because i offer with all my packages a free domain, i think i'd fixed the annually pricing problem because i found through many posts www.1and1.com is a good domain provider and i think a 6$ per year is an affordable price for a new opening company, but i dun know what to do for customers signing up for a month, how to get domains for them, and i dunno also should i get a domain reseller and how does it works, or should i order per peace

waiting for your replys :)

Its simple calculation I think. You need to see how much you earn per domain with a reseller account compared to buy from a cheap registrar.

Just out of curiosity, you’re going to run all of your customer’s accounts out of your personal 1and1 account? That spells disaster.

so what should i do in this case ?

Originally posted by khaled_helmy
so what should i do in this case ?

I highly recommend that you keep your clients domains separate from your personal domains. I don't know how many clients you intend to have but the management of having to buy all of my clients domains through a personal account at 1and1 doesn't sound appealing.

ok, i've knows it doesnt sound good, tell me what to do in detail ?

I would love to spoon feed you but then you would become another one of me. Honestly, my advice is simple. If you are going to be taking care of your clients domains then at a minimum you need a reseller account. The selection of a reseller program is something you will need to search out and decide. I'm biased but here is my honest assessment.

Directi - if you need no extra services and will use your own nameservers then the price is hard to beat. I still have a cheap reseller account with them but when I started to get serious about using it I had PayPal issues, my storefront was down, and then they had some serious DNS issues the week I had a few people sign up under me. End of the story...I dumped them and have yet to ask for a refund of my deposit.

WWD (a.k.a GoDaddy Reseller) - Why would somebody want to buy from you when GD has specials all the time? The extra "pushy" products is a big turn-off. And I don't like the lack of visibility you have as a WWD reseller. On a good note if you have enough volume to cover the $99 yearly "fee" then the prices aren't bad. They also have a stable system unlike Directi. Oh but wait, the worst thing about GD/WWD is their domain push policies! Anytime you internally transfer a domain they reset the 60 day clock before you can transfer out. This has cost me a domain sale on more than one occasion.

eNom - I guess you knew this was coming. I have some issues with eNom. They have their warts also. For me it was the best solution hence my investment with them. Mature system and overall the best well-rounded registrar for a domain reseller.

Everyone has their opinion and the above is mine.

but he is trying to find the cheapest buy, not a good selling system package that costs him extra $ for every domain he purchases. there is a difference..

yes, thats the point i'm talkin about. because i'm not gonna be a domain registerer. i'm just a hosting compnay that offers a hosting packages with a free domain with each of them, so getting an 8$ or 9$ would be a loss for me, i'm searching for a 7$ or 6$ domain registerer for my clients, and i was asking if a client signed up a hosting package and ofcourse he will get a free domain, but after month he left me, would the anually paid domain will be useless ?
or what should be done in case of this happens ?

khaled, I thought of one reason that might be a weak point. have you checked if its easy to transfer between people with 1 and 1 ? with wwd system you can do it in minutes and with automatic for free.

but reseller packages cost.

what do you mean useless? for who?

i didnt checked it yet man, but i think the only solution for this is to be each domain alone, and i meant with useless, that maybe the client don't ask for his domain, and in this case i won't use it, so the money i paid for was a loss for me, or what do u think ?

I don't think keeping it if it's offered to someone is a good idea. but domains can be sold so someone might buy it..

Well, actually what kind of audience are you expecting? like for dummies web hosting users they don't really want to control their domain names nor even know how to deal with a web hosting account.

Depending on your services you could inclued added value services to your web hosting package.

Not only, you can charge more (because you are managing everything!), you have much more control of your business and customers problems related to domain name configuration..

companies like 1and1, namecheap, registerfly, ev1servers aren't meant to be for resellers, its for END users.

open a reseller account with any of the reputable registrars to have more control and more anonymous to your customers when selling domains :)