Hi,

I was just wondering what you resellers think (anyone else may vote as well). I want to know, are you willing to pay an extra $10-$30/month (or so) for a reseller plan with better support and better uptime?

If you vote, please post why you picked it.

I thought support and uptime was standard in every hosting plan?

Yes, Marc it is. What I meant, are you willing to pay a little extra for a company that has *better* support and uptime for resellers. *Better* meaning better then any company out there.

Ehhh?

Don't really know about this one... Pay EXTRA for better support and uptime? Silly me, I thought this was part of the deal in the first place:eek:

I would be interested, but would like to know what you really mean by this.

But you have to remember that a lot of resellers are really small, maybe they they have a $25/month bulk package to host a handful of people. If you add $10-30 to this I'm sure a lot of people would look elsewhere.

biosphere

I think he's asking if you're willing to spend more for a company with better support and uptime. I don't think he's asking if people are willing to pay an additional fee for better support and uptime, as that would be silly.

If I had a choice between 2 companies, both with great reseller packages... one has great support, with forums, quick response, etc. and the other only offers email support, or is limited on support.. I would have to say that I would pay a little extra for better support/access to support.

If others on the WHT board recommend a host for its good support and quick response, and it cost more. They would still be in the running.

Price is part of your decision, but quality should also play a role in your decision.

You could get bobcares for resellers ;)

How would you guarantee better uptime? Unless you start mirroring servers of course.

I may pay for better uptime and support and faster servers etc.
Why not.. Downtime makes me lose money.

Originally posted by littlest
If I had a choice between 2 companies, both with great reseller packages... one has great support, with forums, quick response, etc. and the other only offers email support, or is limited on support.. I would have to say that I would pay a little extra for better support/access to support.

I fully agree with the above.

How would you guarantee better uptime? Unless you start mirroring servers of course.

Maybe by not cram servers full of domains. More doamins, more chances of downtime. So my guess is that you can host with someone who limits domains within each account/server or uses a VDS.

I am sure someone will argure that "we don't" cram domains. Fine. But simple economics tells me you (general sense - not you)pay the same for your servers, BW, etc.. If you offer low cost reseller plans loaded with domains, then I feel you have a greater chance of downtime. That is just me thinking logically though.

Of course this is my view, and not related to the methods used by any reseller in particular.

same as littlest here :)

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
How would you guarantee better uptime? Unless you start mirroring servers of course.
Just how difficult is that Allen? Would you ever offer it as an optional extra?

With downtime the No.1 public enemy, an enhanced service like that would find a market rather quickly, I would imagine. :)

Originally posted by MattS
Yes, Marc it is. What I meant, are you willing to pay a little extra for a company that has *better* support and uptime for resellers. *Better* meaning better then any company out there.
I think what you're saying here is, a supplier that has better boxes, in better datacenters with better suppliers, with less resellers per box [5 max] etc...etc... Enhanced services that cost much more than the standard $35/mth reseller plan. :)

If you as a reseller wanted 100% uptime and were willing to pay up to $30 extra, wouldn't it just be easier to buy 2 reseller plans from the same host, but ask that he puts them on different servers in different datacenters.
So that if server A went down, you have redundancy and your account on server B kicks in.

What I mean is, this is possible now, I'm sure hosts like Splashhost could arrange something like this ?

If you had a new company that bought better servers, put them in a better datacenter and had less accounts per server.
Now lets say one of the servers was fork bombed, and was down for a few hours, and not being 100% "up".
What would be the difference between your company and another host like Splashhost ?

The point is no matter how much you charge, no matter how careful you are, you cannot be sure that your servers will be up 100%.

Originally posted by Coder
Now lets say one of the servers was fork bombed, and was down for a few hours, and not being 100% "up".
What would be the difference between your company and another host like ...
This is not directed to any company specifically:

You have a responsibility as a web host company to KEEP those servers up, no matter what. To do that, you need to know what you're doing, and know well. Knowing how to use CPanel, Plesk, Ensim, or whatever other panels admins use isn't good enough. You need to know how to hunt down those fork bombs or anything else and put an immediate stop to them.

What is the difference between companies? The knowledge of the admins monitoring the servers. You don't need to know everything (by far!), but you do need to know more than just how to operate a control panel, which I get the feeling most new hosts don't (by the posts I see here).

If you're going to hire an admin that knows what he's doing, s/he's not going to be cheap. In turn, neither are your prices, which is why this thread started, I believe.

Then again, there are expensive hosts out there that don't know their hand from their foot. It swings both ways...

People will say they are prepared to pay more for a better quality service but in practice the trend is for people to move to cheaper suppliers.

Our prices are not at the top end of what people pay, but I would say that 80% of resellers who leave us are moving to go somewhere cheaper.

Gordon

I voted no.

Before I selected my host, I:

Knew the market I will be targeting
Researched hosts and selected a suitable one for the market
As long as my host's previous record doesn't change substantially for the worse, I'm fine with what I have.

Could be different in say a year of course, if I go after a different market with different requirements.

People who find themselves changing hosts frequently - or frequently unhappy with their host - may have missed one of the steps above.

If I'm doing to-and-fro occasional driving, I'll probably buy a Ford. If I'm on the road for hours every day for business, I'll probably get a BMW :)

Originally posted by Coder
If you as a reseller wanted 100% uptime and were willing to pay up to $30 extra, wouldn't it just be easier to buy 2 reseller plans from the same host, but ask that he puts them on different servers in different datacenters.
So that if server A went down, you have redundancy and your account on server B kicks in.

What I mean is, this is possible now, I'm sure hosts like Splashhost could arrange something like this ?
So how do you do that with database driven websites?? :confused: :eek:

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
So how do you do that with database driven websites??
Probably the same way WHT does it.

http://www2.webhostingtalk.com

Same story, different server/DC.


whoops, the same way they _used_ to do it. :)

Originally posted by Coder
If you as a reseller wanted 100% uptime and were willing to pay up to $30 extra, wouldn't it just be easier to buy 2 reseller plans from the same host, but ask that he puts them on different servers in different datacenters.
So that if server A went down, you have redundancy and your account on server B kicks in.

What I mean is, this is possible now, I'm sure hosts like Splashhost could arrange something like this ?

If you had a new company that bought better servers, put them in a better datacenter and had less accounts per server.
Now lets say one of the servers was fork bombed, and was down for a few hours, and not being 100% "up".
What would be the difference between your company and another host like Splashhost ?

The point is no matter how much you charge, no matter how careful you are, you cannot be sure that your servers will be up 100%.

That would work-putting your account on two different servers in the same data center-however; not that best way ;)

i would expect any host i picked to have good enough uptime that i wouldnt need to pay extra to get better.
What i'd be willing to pay extra for is better support. For instance, instead of having my email/ticket/whatever answered within 24-36 hours, to have it answered within 4-6 hours....that sorta thing :)

It takes your host 24/36 hours to reply to a support ticket?

Wow I'd move host :D

Matt: Hell no, i get replies within 2 hours, and 3/4 of the time within 5 minutes :P
I was merely using it as an example

That's a good thing ;)

Before I pick up my providers i eveluate all their pros and cons. In general you'll get what you pay for and I do not think that if a reseller will offer me two identical plans with different prices based on their uptime/support I'm gonna trust him.

One acceptable solution is mirroring and it deserves paying for it. ;)

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
How would you guarantee better uptime? Unless you start mirroring servers of course.

Choosing better hardware Instead of custom made servers may help. For example we use servers with 3 redundant power supplies (hot swapable) , Raid 5 drives, more expensive hardware. This will gurantee better hardware uptime.

Some of long down times are related to cheap hardware, hard drives, scsi and ide controllers etc.

For network uptime choosing a better upstream provider will do that. Also it may be expensive but colocation at Verio data center is more perfect than a datacenter that uses cognet only.

And choosing a more stable CP will help on higher uptimes too.

OS is important too. For example Unix has shown better uptime than windows. Some people think BSD Unix is more stable than Linux for example.

And finally an experienced admin is the most effective thing on uptime and service quality.

An unexperienced admin always crashes the server by doing wrong things.

If we look at uptimes in hostmatters.com we can see uptimes of moe than 100 days for example. It is apparent that they have done something better.

Regards,
Mac