We have been offering shared hosting plans for the past year and are looking to expand. I have noticed that there are many small hosting companies offering dedicated server packages. The only way I would be able to offer such packages is to resell dedicated server plans from our provider.

Since the plans we have through our hosting provider do not include tech support, we would be able to charge our customers for tech support and handle all their inquiries.

Question: Are there many hosting sites out there that resell dedicated plans or do most of them have their dedicated servers in-house?

Yes, most providers resell their dedicated servers.

This is because of financial reasons:

1. Building a data centre to house your own is very expensive and a massive project for your average businessman/woman.

2. Even getting your own suite is expensive.

Therefore it is far better to resell another companies servers. Of course you could colocate your servers but even then you have very high costs. Even some of the biggest companies resell other data centres servers.

When you have enough with a data centre, if you contact them, they can usually work out a nice discount for your servers with them.

when you resell dedicated servers, who provides the support you or the data center?

YOU provide direct support, but if it is a managed solution then the company does the work (unless you do) and all communication goes through you.

I only have costumers dedicated server but we manage the box. Unmanaged dedicated server's, no sale in history

What kind of questions can I expect from clients who get a dedicated server plan through me? Those who are currently offering dedicated servers, what kind of questions are you recieving from your clients and to what kind of volume from an average customer?

Depends. Questions can relate to ANYTHING, all the standard shared hosting questions, then you have service configuration issues, panel setup and configuration, dns setup, kernel and panel upgrades, additional service installation, bugs in the control panel....

The more panels you support, the more questions...