Is it a good idea to offer reseller accounts with unlimited accounts? Or, should they be limited?

Many hosts seem to offer unlimited domains however with space, bandwidth and database limits then you basically are limiting the number of accounts anyway. I personally wouldn't offer unlimited accounts and unlimited databases both, that could be a big problem.

Unlimited makes no sense. People will soon find that it is indeed limited ;)

True enough. It should be shown as unmetered not unlimited but most end users don't know the difference anyway

I mean they can creat as many account as they want within their allotted quota.

Indeed, I think you should put "( as much as he quota can hold )" When you're offerng unlimiteds...

Its normally not a bad idea, most resellers will only use 10-20 accounts on a smaller plan. Although you do need some type of limitations somewhere. I've seen clients signup and create hundreds of domains on a 10 dollar a month account.

With unlimited domain hosts you'll run into a loss on the server. The amount of time it takes to process just normal maintanence on a typical server can deluge the server's cpu(s) if not adequetly maintained. You're better off going with a provider with some sort of domain limit which shows they are aware of this fact. A server doesn't have to be "Busy", to get overwhelmed by maintanence services not adequetly configured.

There was a guy here just last week I believe who had a reseller that was signing up hundreds of free paid accounts on his reseller account that offered 'unlimited' domains

Well maybe if you not offering to much bandwidth and space... Otherwise I see why not... Most people won't create 100s of accounts.

Really, I say it just depends on the theme of your company. Example, some companies are meant to be expensive and you pay for everything that you get. So if you are a expensive company, then I'd say yes, you would want limited accounts (good size however). It's the opposite with budget hosts. However, some expensive hosts do have unlimited domains (very very few).

It's not a bad idea at all, doesn't make any difference if a user has 2 accounts or 200 accounts as long as they're within their HD space and bandwidth restrictions. I've never seen a reseller abuse an unlimited accounts feature before.

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The main place most hosts run into problems offering unlimited domains with their reseller accounts is MySQL usage - however, it's pretty trivial to limit the number of MySQL connections on a per-user basis, so that can be an effective way to prevent resellers from using more than their fair share of CPU and RAM resources on the server.

I signed up for an unlimited reseller once and quickly found out it was limited

Originally posted by Lubby
Many hosts seem to offer unlimited domains however with space, bandwidth and database limits then you basically are limiting the number of accounts anyway. I personally wouldn't offer unlimited accounts and unlimited databases both, that could be a big problem.

How do you limit the amount of mysql accounts that a reseller can sell?

Originally posted by Lubby
Many hosts seem to offer unlimited domains however with space, bandwidth and database limits then you basically are limiting the number of accounts anyway..

I almost agree with you, but it is the reseller's responsibility to know what he is buying when he orders the reseller package.

"Unlimted accounts, 2gb space, 20 GB bandwidth".

If it is all laid out in front of me like that, common sense tells me that I have as many accounts that I need until I start to get close to those limits. If the host holds up to their part of the deal, I personally like that kind of flexibility.

I don't think it warrants near the same type of attention as the clowns who offer unlimited bandwidth or space should get.

The database limits is another issue. I fully agree with you there.