Hello,
I have been providing managed web services (design, hosting, on-site email setup, content updates, etc.) to several local small business clients for the past year. During this time, I have done a lot of marketing research and it appears that I could increase my local clientele significantly (to several 100) - all of my business thus far has been word of mouth, and I'm now planning a small marketing campaign to jump start it further. In finalizing my business plan, I've been "stuck" on the hosting scheme. I want to have this resolved before initiating my marketing activity - would be nice to have a place to actually host the accounts and not have to 'move them later on! I currently am partnered in a "reseller plan" that is basically a discounted seperate account set-up - I get a discount for each account, which has it's own space, domain name, IP address, control panel, etc. While this has worked and has been profitable, I see that using these other "shared" reseller plans offer significant profit improvement for me, and facilitate management of multiple accounts.
From what I have been able to gather in researching this, it appears that all accounts are managed through a top level control panel (e.g. WHM) - that has great appeal rather than accessing each account's control panel individually. These all seem to offer the basic admin services - freeing me from having to do a lot of the OS / Network tasks - which is why I am not interested in a dedicated server or VPN. There are however a few issues with such reseller plans that I have not been able to satisfactorily resolve and hope that someone here could enlighten me:

1) I'm concerned about EMAIL - have not found a good answer regarding each account's email access - is this generally set-up under a common email server or does each have their own? Some clients prefer to set up their own email accounts and passwords. can this be easily done with 'shared' accounts / IP addresses?

2) I've noticed on this FORUM that many people seem to 'change hosts' on a regular basis. Is there a reason for that - I see some issues with up time / support? Is that a common issue with such reseller plans??

3) There has been a lot of discussion here about the issue of IP addresses and the need to justify them. This has raised a concern in that some of the reseller hosts that I am looking at offer individual account & IP addresses (e.g. IX Webhosting's reseller plan - 10 domains, 10 dedicated IP addresses). Is there something I'm not understanding?

By the way, this forum is great - it has answered many of my questions / concerns as I finalize my business plan. Thanks!!!
:lovewht:

1 - I can only comment for cPanel accounts. The way it works is, you create a cPanel account from WHM. In that cPanel account, your client can create their own email addresses (usually with the pop3/smtp servers being mail.domain.com)

2- This is due in part to bad hosts, or lack of support, or just can't make some clients happy. There's a thousand and one webhosts, so users don't worry too much about moving

3- ARIN requires justification for each IP given out, not the webhost. Typical justification is SSL certs (as they require a dedicated IP). A webhost is free to give out as many IPs as they want, as long as they're justified.

1 - I can only comment for cPanel accounts. The way it works is, you create a cPanel account from WHM. In that cPanel account, your client can create their own email addresses (usually with the pop3/smtp servers being mail.domain.com)

WK-Anthony, thanks for the reply. I didn't see that functionality when I was trying out some demo's. The way most hosts are stating features, it looked like all emails were under one mail server and I had to set up all the emails from that one server / account. I also had the sense that the 'additionally hosted domains' did not have their own cPanels - guess I didn't understand. Thanks again!

2- This is due in part to bad hosts, or lack of support, or just can't make some clients happy. There's a thousand and one webhosts, so users don't worry too much about moving

That can get to be a lot of work if you had several hundred domains!!
My main concern is reliability & up-time. Bandwidth requirements would be somewhat limited. Most of the clientele would be using their site as added information for Customers wanting more information about the small business owner (i.e. services offered, guarantees, etc.). Since I basically am 'managing' the site for most, I have decided not to solicit customers that would tend to migrate towards e-commerce sites (targeted marketing), at least not yet anyway - too many other sites that do it well already.


3- ARIN requires justification for each IP given out, not the webhost. Typical justification is SSL certs (as they require a dedicated IP). A webhost is free to give out as many IPs as they want, as long as they're justified..
Thanks - didn't quite understand all the related issues! Certaintly can make one's head spin in selecting a host provider!!! .

sojorner, I would also suggest cPanel. Not sure what you use now for your customers, but cPanel sure seems the easiest to administer and is extremely stable with upgrades (other than e.g. Plesk ... each upgrade creates problems here).
As for the hosting provider .... that is a difficult question. In most cases you will only know after some time if you made a good decision or not. Of course, asking some pointed questions before signing up will help.

John

John,
Thanks for the reply. I am currently using Vdeck control panel. Works rather well - easy to navigate, etc. However, as I said in my note, this is an individual account set-up - not a multiple shared IP set-up. Thus each domain is set-up as a separate account with the provider, each has it's own IP address, control panel, Email set-up , etc. As a reseller with this hosting company, I do get a top level control panel which allows me to 'manage' the accounts - but only from a top level set-up perspective (features allowed for the account such as storage space / bandwidth / etc.). Since I only have a few accounts right now, it's not bad managing the accounts. But I'm looking to greatly expand what I am doing and like some of the features I see with the 'shared multi-domain' set-ups.

I agree with the comments about selecting a provider. I've had great service from my current provider, but the cost is higher and they do not offer the multi-domain hosting / management set-up like that of hostgater and others.

Thanks again!

Hi again:

I have never heard of "Vdeck" before. But anyway, what you describe seems *basically* just the same as any other reseller plan, just that you have another business deal with them -- a per-account payment plan. Most hosts offer unlimited domain reseller accounts. You pay a flat monthly fee and that's it. So, if you look around, you will see that most offers look like this -- just pick the company that you think you can trust, and that offers all the features you need. .... About your note that your current company has each domain on a separate IP. Really, are you sure? That would be both unnecessary and likely against ARIN rules, unless all these domains are business sites with SSL certs installed.

John

3) There has been a lot of discussion here about the issue of IP addresses and the need to justify them. This has raised a concern in that some of the reseller hosts that I am looking at offer individual account & IP addresses (e.g. IX Webhosting's reseller plan - 10 domains, 10 dedicated IP addresses). Is there something I'm not understanding?

We get a lot of requests for dedicated IPs from people that don't really need them at all. Somehow a lot of people have managed to get it in their head that an account without a dedicated IP is somehow worse than an account with a dedicated IP. Dedicated IPs are really only needed for websites with SSL certs (https://) or for the extremely privacy-conscious user.