I am seriously considering going into the hosting world, and 99.9% will. But, should I offer an online, automated signup on my site?

I have heard that lots of fraud cases have been caused because of this service, but equally, surely I'll get more signups if I do offer it?

Would I also eliminate the need of purchasing an SSL certificate if I didn't offer this service?

Just need a few opinions on this, thanks a lot people, will7.

If you care about fraud cases, then no. I would not recommend offering any sort of "instant" activation.

You will need an ssl cert, at least 1. Are you not going to allow clients to secure some of their pages?

Hello,

This really depends on your style.

Do you want to verify all orders before they are processed? If so, that means that all orders will be created if you have automated signup meaning that you are not in control of who can sign up and who can't sign up.


I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea if you had a good fraud protection system.

Offering non automated hosting signups means that you can personally verify all orders which will cut down on fraud orders if you know what you are doing.

If you didn't offer that service, what would you be offering that doesnt require the use of an SSL cert.?

Good luck.

I was on about using an SSL cert for my own site. Forget about it, that was a bit of a crazy moment lol!

If you offer automated signups. You can use your own SSL cert. if you want to keep the customers on your website. You can do this with alot of merchant accounts out now. But this can not be done with paypal.

Ryan

I think the real issue is fraud
After the autosignup, you'll have to reverify all accounts

Fraudgate www.fraudgate.com and
VariLogix http://www.varilogix.com

They screen for potential online fraude. Check them out, many hosts use these services.

If you use fraud screening services and are willing to take the risk, then go for it.

But if you don't want to risk chargebacks or other problems then manually screen each order.

Originally posted by E_man3
Fraudgate www.fraudgate.com and
VariLogix http://www.varilogix.com

They screen for potential online fraude. Check them out, many hosts use these services.

If a host is fully automating everything, this sounds like a big plus

Yep, but an added task on their side :).

Thanks,

Ryan

Automation is good, but you will always need to spend some day everyday just to check on signups. Automating account creation and welcome emails does save alot of time.

The issue of chargebacks is invariably annoying, so if you want to automate, fine - but always keep a cash buffer should a few signups turn sour in any particular month. If things really go bad (haven't had any extremely bad months), you can always turn it off for the short term.

I think advertising "instant activation" on your website is not smart, as "the wrong sort" will be looking for exactly that type of host. Also, instant activation to me doesn't sound like a real benefit anyway. It's not like an extra day of waiting isn't going to hurt most NEW online businesses, and I repeat NEW online business.

Once you reach a critical mass, you'll need to setup a system to flag certain signups that look suspicious, maybe based on country, IP range, etc. so you don't need to look at everyone's signup.

I was also wondering, has anyone integrated automated phone verification into their system? Any experiences with that?

Chris

Best option is to use a fraud screening service if you choose to offer instant activation,thats just one of the ways to keep your self safe from fraudulent orders.

Also, it's good to verify the accounts yourself after they have been activated (call the client) and talk to them yourself.

I'm not too confident with those fraud screening services. Even though someone may have completed a fraudguardian + varilogix fraud call check, I still don't automate their signups. Its just a risk i'm not willing to take.

I highly doubt customers are going to change their minds just because it would take a couple more hours to have their account activated rather than "instantly". I've even went as far as informing customers that all orders are verified manually before they are activated just to keep the bad crowd out.

In my honest opinion, you should just forget about the automated system. The extra time you put into your business will ensure your peice of mind, since you know more about who is supposedly buying from you. Even companies that don't use automation get hits from customers they may not want, for specific reasons.

With the company I use for hosting, the owner and I have gotten offers from groups which shouldn't be given any host, and I can say that it pays to "screen" your customers.

Hope your decision works out for the best.

Automated systems leads to a lot of fraud and in the end more trouble than you would of had if you had bothered verifying each acount.

Once you are big you will have someone there to active at all times, but as someone said people wont mind to wait a few extra hours to wait for activation.

I'd agree with the assessment that automated signups lead to more fraud - especially if you promote that fact on your Web site.

Services like FraudGate.com and Varilogix - or the manual phone verification call equivalent - can help to significantly reduce your fraudulent orders but this is an area that you definitely want to pay a lot of attention to.

you can look out a middle solution , if you are looking for automating your business just to save time doing it after order is recieved , you will have to hold the responsibility of chargebacks or frauded orders and thats a big problem ,
Automated sign ups recieve more fraud alerts in a day that u normally do in a month , i personally been through it and the day after i automated signups i got 100 fraud orders in less than a week which i had to go through one by one and cancel or verify .
My advice , automate signups to save info and plan to be created and let it stay in PENDING MODE , after your review you can complete creation by one click COMPLETE !
That would be the best thing to be done , in my eyes !

Yeah, if you are going to start, maybe manually is the better way.

Thanks guys. Appreciate all the help you guys have given me, and I think I'm gonna go with manually approving all accounts before activation.

This could also be a plus: customers might think that my company is more professional and reliable because they check all accounts to make sure they're OK, and not fraud - caring about the customer? Lol. You never know!

One important thing to add in this thread, is what happened to me. We are/were always manually approving customer sign-ups and one day a guy ordered and paid with a phoney credit card (which passed worldpay's supposedly advanced fraud prevention) for a web hosting plan and domain name.

It looked suspicious to me (yahoo email account) and decided to contact the customer and see if he responds to my request. He responded in 20 minutes and asked for some more information on the services provided.

Since worldpay aknowledged payment received ok, I flagged the account for setup and authorised the registration of his domain name. 2 days later got complaints from various ISP's and spam combating organisations that spam was sent through a specific domain/ip.

Closed the account, informed the customer for the breach of our TOS and obviously got no reply. 2 weeks later, even though I had cancelled the futurepay aggreement with the customer, worldpay issued a chargeback regarding the first payment saying that the cardholder does not accept he ordered hosting.

Sometimes even if you manually approve customer sign-ups you can get conned big time. Also domain names are not refundable which left me with a widely blacklisted domain in my collection.

I have to agree with the above.

Automated signups and Hosting do not go well together.