If I can use mchost as an example for this question.

The basic reselling account from mchost provides 12Gb of data transfer for an unlimited number of domains. So I could host 25 users or 250 users on this account (in theory, so bare with me).

If I assume I have 100 clients, whom all must share 12Gb per month, then that means on average each client is only allowed approx 120Mb per month. This isn't much at all, especially when I could buy a hosting package that gives me 1Gb per month from ValuableHost for $3 per month.

Am I missing something here, or is there something I just don't understand.

Thanks!! I'm really new to this, and I'm performing feasibility studies in my head to see if I really want to try being a reseller.

It really depends on what sort of site your clients would be using their account for.

There are a great number of personal sites that only dribble out 1 - 5 meg a month. My own personal pages do about that as they have a very low traffic count.

Even some popular low-graphic hobby sites consume relatively small amounts.

If, on the other hand, your clients are using their sites for distributing home made video clips of the latest techno-pop musical, sure, that bandwidth will be gobbled very quickly indeed.

That's one perspective anyway.


Lats...

Good point, I guess I assumed that most (all?) sites consumed a lot of bandwidth. But do you think that people will think, oh I can get this account with company A with 1Gb for 9.95 per month, or I can get this one with company B (mine) with 200Mb for 9.95 per month? Or is that a clear indication that I shouldn't be charging 9.95 per month?! :P

Thanks

There are 2 different kinds of reseller plans.

1. You host all your clients' accounts under the same space and bandwidth - one large account - and you basically control how much disk space and bandwidth, pop3 accounts, ftp accounts, etc. you give each client.

2. You purchase a reseller hosting account for your company and then buy each account separately for each of your clients with a pre-defined amount of space, bandwidth, pop3 accounts, etc.

I hope this helps in your decision to find the right provider for your business :)

Thanks kiwi; strange you should pop up and post here, just while I was browsing your website.

Thanks to lats as well.

I think you will find a alot of hosts will "Over Sell" - not all your customers will use all there bandwith!

Surely if you have a 100 client @ 9.95 you can afford the extra bandwith!?

acidHL is right, overselling is the point you're missing.

Even with a few big customers, the average customer is not generally going to use a lot of bandwidth, despite what you offer. Currently, one of my sites has 30 or 40 clients with an average of about 30Mb/month bandwidth usage each. So the theory goes that even if I offer 5Gb bandwidth, they are still only going to use 30Mb / month.

So why limit bandwidth at all? Apart from unlimited bandwidth being an impossibility, it is a fact of life that some sites WILL use all of their allotted bandwidth. This is where you have to be careful with the numbers and only offer as much bandwidth as you can reasonably afford to provide, should you get a few customers using their total amount.

So thats it in a nutshell, you oversell hosting based on the knowledge that the majority of your customers will not use all of their bandwidth - just as airlines oversell flights based on how many cancellations they expect. Just be careful with the numbers, because you don't want to be stuck with too many passengers and not enough flights! :D