Hey,
Can anybody tell me why some companies offer Reseller plans in addition to the shared hosting plans?

From a business point of view I'm trying to decide if the option is a plus or not, and I really can't decide.

On one hand, I'm guessing that your reseller accounts are steady money because they probably won't want to move their sites. On the other hand the technical skill of some of the resellers I know is way lower than basic and I can't see having to babysit someone else's "unlimited" sites while they get paid and I get a monthly fee.

What is the attraction and please share pros and cons alike. I need to make a decision pretty soon.

Oh yeah, and does anybody require some kind of pre-qualification?

LH

Reseller hosting is a good way to make a little bit more money per plan for the same amount of disk space/transfer allocated.

I find that more support requests come from regular shared customers (and I have more resellers than shared hosting customers)

Resellers are also less fickle, are willing to pay a little bit more for quality, rather than seeking the cheapest, since they need stability and reliability for their end users.

Reseller hosting means more revenue. There is a reseller market, why not try fulfilling some of the demand there is?

Originally posted by Yash-JH
Reseller hosting means more revenue. There is a reseller market, why not try fulfilling some of the demand there is?
The one area someone might want to do that is if they're specializing in shared hosting and want to stick to that.

We launched our reseller plans only about 1.5 years ago. So yes prior to that we primarily focused on shared hosting.

Reseller hosting added another revenue source. We didn't see any reason to ignore it :)

ok but what about support for your resellers? Are they doing their own support or are you having to answer calls for your resellers customers too?

We provide anonymous support to reseller end-users for a small fee at the moment. It is working out very well for us

Yash, I checked out your site and that is really nice. I still don't know if I want resellers or not. Something tells me I'm going to be stuck with more tech support than I can handle. I have enough already.

I think I just have my own preconceptions of what reseller support is like. My brother owns his own host service and he says that his resellers dont even try to solve any prorlems they just call him without trying to do any basic troubleshooting. I always hear his rantings about how that sucks.

Your angle to this is very different and thanks for showing me that it isnt all bad...

Originally posted by LadyHost
Yash, I checked out your site and that is really nice. I still don't know if I want resellers or not. Something tells me I'm going to be stuck with more tech support than I can handle. I have enough already.

I think I just have my own preconceptions of what reseller support is like. My brother owns his own host service and he says that his resellers dont even try to solve any prorlems they just call him without trying to do any basic troubleshooting. I always hear his rantings about how that sucks.

Your angle to this is very different and thanks for showing me that it isnt all bad... We've found that most of our reseller are fairly tech-savvy, but those who aren't really hosting-savvy at first seem to at least know how to do things such as FTPing files, change CGI permissions, and check email. Shared hosting seems to get more of those issues, while reseller hosting does not.

I started in the Sys-Admin first when I got a Shared Hosting, then I moved to Reseller and you start learning some new stuff. Then you make the big jump to dedicated and that's when the magic begins.

We have been toying with the idea of providing support for our resellers end users for a fee, but currently unless it is a server issue or something directly dealing with the domain the reseller signed up with we do not support it.

Resellers can add a great revenue stream and with my experience don't seem to have nearly as many problems.

id certaily try and combine the too together for extra revenue, Unless you want to purely focus on Shared Hosting, I doubt resellers would need alot of support WHM is pretty straight forward.
I trust you'll make the right choice
Regards

I'm swaying on the side of having it, but here's some more questions:

1) How do you qualify a reseller versus someone who just wants a price break for hosting multiple sites?

2) Does anyone have a "special process" for reseller sign-ups - ie. Reseller must have a EIN or actual business etc.

3) how do you handle it when a reseller doesnt pay his bill and his customers want their websites up?

thanks for the info so far...

Well in our case we do not really require EIN or actual business etc. Our resellerplans open to everyone who ever have extra time to earn some dosh from hosting. In the case of support we donot directly provide support to resellers clients. We prefer to be on background and rather train reseller to deal with this kind of issues.
Aslo if a reseller doesn't pay we will ofcource acquire their customers. (which has never happened.) And we will also compensate the acquired customers for inconvenience caused by the reseller by providing them free hosting for 1-2 months.

Originally posted by quicklyweb
We prefer to be on background and rather train reseller to deal with this kind of issues....

Train the reseller?

So there's my fear. I'm thinking that resellers SHOULD BE people who have at least enough technical savvy to manage a website. From reading posts in the Reseller section of WHT, some don't seem to know how to tie their shoes while others could probably run EV1 by themselves.

So when you say "train" them what do you mean because I can't tell you how many times I've had to handhold a new person and had to spend over an hour at 7 cents a minute trying to get through something simple like email configuration, only to be asked another "how do I.." that lasts another 30 minutes!

This is why I'm wondering if a pre-qualification is in order. That way I don't end up managing the accounts that the reseller is charging other people to manage.

Or does it all come down to...case by case?
Truly this is a business decision that could make or break my support services and I try to keep a high standard.

LH