How much do clients really care about instant account activation, compaired to it taking a few hours? Do you think it really matters a whole lot?

instant account activation can be dangerous...

let's say buddy over here comes along with his warez site. He sees that you offer instant account activation. So he orders with a stolen CC, your CC processor dosn't catch him. Now since you offer instant account actication and this is 1 in the morning you can't catch him either. He uploads his warez within 10 Mins... The whole night people are downloading their warez and when you wake up, You find out that you could have stopped all this if you could have created his account manually. Save yourself the trouble and create all your accounts manually. If a person won't sign-up with you because you don't offer instant account activation, then that's their problem. instant account activation can be abused a lot, (eg. spamming, illegal stuff etc...)

Hope I helped you...

or, you could do an authorization auto set up, where all you have to do is look over the submitted information and then click one button and the account is set up.

Im not too sure if any CPs offer this, maybe it should be something to include in the future.


Jim

Well the poll options don't do much good because they're putting all the customers into one mindset. It WILL stop some people from signing up, others it won't. It's a person by person basis. And remember these are "potential clients", as actual clients will already have signed up. ;D

It's really how you wish to run your company. I find it better to not do instant setup since it gives you time to look through their info and make sure it's all valid yourself. It may make a few people leave the site, but unless the domain is already pointed to the nameservers and/or they get their own IP, there's no need for it to be instant.

Thanks a lot! You all helped me. I think I will just maunually setup accounts.

Well, as a customer, here's my mindset:

If I were switching hosts because I were close to outgrowing a plan or were looking to downgrade some features, then I could be patient.

But, if I were escaping the host from hell, I'd want everything done asap.

I've gotten burned a few times expressing my feelings on this. I think it is EXTREMELY needed. Now look at that sentence, but don't look at it to the danger of the client. Here we offer instant signup that we've worked at building for almost 2 years in iControl (that piece was the hardest).

I would only recommed it if you have the ability to do so and the ability to protect your clients (i.e. AVS checks, other placement checks and some type of monitoring system). This will inturn give your company more exposure and protect your from spammers who signup and they fly away the next day.

If you need any tips on how we did it let me know.

Originally posted by ryank
If you need any tips on how we did it let me know.

Why don't you just post your tip here. I'm sure the others will find it interesting too. :)

I think if you have some ways to keep new users from sending email from within your server then if is safe enough to do instant account setup.

The procedure could be like this: new user sign up and get his account activated, he can do anything with his account (upload files, etc), BUT he is not allowed to send any mail from within the server (formmail, webmail, etc), the host will enable his email delivery access after customer's information has been verified, which shouldn't take more than two days.

What "tip" more like "tips ... hugh", we worked for months just figuring out how to do it, it's not as easy as Linux by any means, take for instance DNS modifications, the only minor control panel out there for Windows does it by stopping and restarting the service! I practically laughed when I found out, it's like rebooting your computer everytime you add a new zone. We do it directly via a special, almost secret port in w2k. It is processed in real-time via the in memory DNS component. Anything specific?

Without restarting the dns server?

Oh, now THIS I'm interested in. :grin:

Give a pointer or three? (I found one way to do it, but it required using the Active Directory, which of course means making the web server a PDC, and well, have you seen the memory usage for "lsass" on a machine that has Active Directory running?! I'll pass. ehehe.