So I've done some research and got some good replies to my previous post. I think I am going to go with a reseller package. I have narrowed my choices down between HostNine and ResellerZoom. Each has little things I like the other doesn't offer.

RZ's branded end user support would help me focus on my design business and not have to deal with the customers as much. HN has things like SiteBuilder I think would be handy -- although that may cut into design profits. All in all they seem about the same. Anyone know any of the "meaty" differences between the two. It seems both allow to resell domains as well which I really like.

I am looking at the Failover 1 packaged from RZ and the Entry level package from HostNine.

Anyone have support experience with these guys and subsequent recommendations?

Am I missing another good reseller out there. Should I be looking at someone else?

Both seem to have pretty good reviews here and certainly satisfied customers who are members here on WHT. You may want to search around the forums a bit http://www.webhostingtalk.com/search.php to see what reviews you can come up with. Also check out http://www.whreviews.com and look for either company on that site aswell.

Have you sent their sales team any pre-sales questions to test reponse times, etc?

Those are good recommendations HostFrog.
You already know my experiences with the company as listed in the previous thread. (great service and support experience)
I would suggest trying to give each company's sales and support team a chat request, a ticket request and maybe even a phone call. I bet they would be more than happy to show off their response times ;-)
Before I chose HostNine I emailed sales a bunch and got to know 3 different sales and support reps through live chat (yep - I contacted them a lot - but, I had a lot of questions ;-) )
Glad to see you did some research and keep us posted.

RZ's branded end user support would help me focus on my design business and not have to deal with the customers as much. HN has things like SiteBuilder I think would be handy

That shouldn't be too hard.

Which do you need more, SiteBuilder or End user support? You get cheaper prices with RZ, but cheaper is not always the better option.

I think whichever plan best suits your requirements and budget with either company should be the one you choose. ResellerZoom has pretty solid feedback, and HostNine has build quite a reputation in a very short amount of time.

Any company can build a short term reputation.

Its whats the long term that matters. As the beginning there is very little issues or problems.

I say give it 1-2 years and see what happens. As there are many hosts that are flyers regardless of reputation. Several examples of excellent reputation that flew within less than a year.

[QUOTE=clanosiris]Any company can build a short term reputation...."
QUOTE]
I would say that is a very general statement and not always true. I have had a company for a good amount of time and I still do not have much of a reputation (I hope that changes ;-) )
Also, I find it entertaining when competitors to the company in question join in the threads.

Hi all,
Hostnine is very soon to release end user support, then that would make the advantage to H9.
Although i admit i dont like the sitebuilder, i found it awkward.

Bucster

Greetings cscertified,

It has nothing to do with reputation or not. I am merely stating hostnine is less than 1 year old.

In an hosting industry there is ALWAYS hiccups including reputable ones.

An example is the bilksem, integrahost , and much more. They established REAL well reputation but went down under. It is merely a warning for new companies thats all.

If it were up to me I would go for resellerzoom.

As for competitors we are no competitors of hostnine rather they target different niche than we do.

Thanks for all the input. The decision was made and I have been with Host9 for about 10 days now. So far it has been a very pleasant experience.

Does HostNine current offer no user end support ? So if a customer has tech problems it's up to us to answer, or can we forward the questions to their tech ?

It is up to you to answer. You can ask H9 for assistance but any communication with your clients need to be done through you. H9 is more than willing to help you get the right answer though.

Does HostNine current offer no user end support ? So if a customer has tech problems it's up to us to answer, or can we forward the questions to their tech ?

Currently they offer no end user support. I have heard from folks over there at Host9 that they intend to offer branded end user support hopefully sometime this quarter. Of course, I can not confirm that, but I do hope they offer that.

Thanks for all the input. The decision was made and I have been with Host9 for about 10 days now. So far it has been a very pleasant experience.

Keep us updated on your future experiences with HostNine, help make WHT a great resource for reviews on web hosts :)

Yea I totally agree, I just tested the response time.

ResellerZoom: 6 minutes
HostNine: 9 minutes

Not bad!

i tested both and decided on resellerzoom for now. although, i have to say, both companies would be a solid choice for someone!

resellerzoom -

1. excellent, prompt support. i couldn't find a time they were not available via live chat
2. complete and prompt resolutions
3. blazingly fast upload AND download
4. end user support is a HUGE plus right now

-rw

i tested both and decided on resellerzoom for now. although, i have to say, both companies would be a solid choice for someone!

resellerzoom -

1. excellent, prompt support. i couldn't find a time they were not available via live chat
2. complete and prompt resolutions
3. blazingly fast upload AND download
4. end user support is a HUGE plus right now

-rw

How did you do that? I am a customer for about a year and tech support is the only issue I have with them. Usually, everything works well and I haven't had any major issues. The service has been very reliable but once something does happen (like now) you really have to get to the right person (who will actually help you) and Live Chat does not appear to be live 24x7. Maybe that's just my own experience and does injustice to the overall tech support of RZ but I have had problems with their responsiveness and competence.

christian...

what plan do you have?

budget?

failover?

thanks!
russell

Advanced Reseller not yet switched to Failover.

Failover basically replaced the Advanced Reseller Plans.

well, for what it's worth... i was advised to go with the failover plan for the best support.

that is not to say support should be bad for anyone in another plan. all i can say is that so far, my experience has been very good and support simply excellent.

i came from a host i really loved, but for whatever reason, the upload speed completely tanked from several locations. since i am a producer and musician, i need to upload HUGE files (600mb) on a regular basis. so, the upload bandwidth is a huge factor for me.

i weighed it out with everything else, including the fact that i host other sites that need speed and reliability, along with the end user support... i came up with RZ (after testing several)

I am going to switch to Failover shortly. Right after I have emotionally recovered from this last move to the datacenter in Atlanta.

The tech support manager Dylan Botha is the best. He knows what he is talking about and actually does things that are thought through. I told him, that without his help I probably wouldn't be there anymore. I wish he had more people like him on his team.

I've also been very spoiled in terms of support. I used to be with Rochen and their support is so personal, it's amazing. They know who you are, have a great sense of humor, do not read from handbooks, and are complete geeks who actually explain things to you. They were not as large as RZ and therefore, we all knew each other from the forums. Someone was always available depending on what time it was. Brad from Australia, Chris from the UK or Tom from the US, plus others. The reason I switched was mainly the fact that we weren't able to oversell and had to move ourselves to newer servers that had features like RVskin, etc. Other than that, it was like family and I do miss that.

Speed and reliability have been great with RZ. As long as things work, it's beautiful but if you run into problems, the amount of tech people who actually take care of you is unfortunately very limited.

I've also been very spoiled in terms of support. I used to be with Rochen and their support is so personal, it's amazing. They know who you are, have a great sense of humor, do not read from handbooks, and are complete geeks who actually explain things to you.Hey Christian,

Great to hear from you again. How are things with you? :)The reason I switched was mainly the fact that we weren't able to oversell and had to move ourselves to newer servers that had features like RVskin, etc. Other than that, it was like family and I do miss that.Yes, we don't allow overselling on our servers. The main reason for this is that it makes our job of keeping the servers running fast and stable much easier. Most of our client base is made up of website design and development firms selling hosting as an add-value service to their small / local business clients, so this is not a real issue for most. We do include RV Skin and several other tools like that with our premium plans though.

I am glad your experience with us was positive though and it is good to see things are working out well for you with your new provider.

Take Care,

- Chris

Starting a reseller account with resellerzoom has been such a joy. Everything was setup without a hassle, and my hundred or so questions were answered by the Live Chat support staff.

FYI, I recently signed up with HostNine, mainly because they have a support phone number. Unfortunately I soon discovered that they do not run phpSuexec, therefore all my sites with admin panels including photo uploading and thumbnail resizing are not supported! Interesting that they are not able to support any sites that feature photo uploading. Anyways their support seemed responsive, though it took three calls to figure this out - the first rep didn't see the root of the problem.

I just signed up with ResellerZoom... fingers crossed.

FYI, I recently signed up with HostNine, mainly because they have a support phone number. Unfortunately I soon discovered that they do not run phpSuexec, therefore all my sites with admin panels including photo uploading and thumbnail resizing are not supported! Interesting that they are not able to support any sites that feature photo uploading. Anyways their support seemed responsive, though it took three calls to figure this out - the first rep didn't see the root of the problem.

I just signed up with ResellerZoom... fingers crossed.

how did the resellerzoom thing work for you?

in my experience they are a super fast and responsive server... when they are actually working.

all too often lately, sites are going down though.

^^ Way to open a thread over a year old....lol

Well it's open now,
there have been many posts re resellerzoom over the past 12 months,
I recommend doing a search here at WHT for more upto date info/comments/experiences.

I have just signed up with hostnine. Looks good for now. They have plenty of servers to choose from all over (many in the US, some in UK, and some in Asia Pacific). Every time you make a new account for a customer you can choose where to host them. That's a really cool feature, I think. After that you can easily migrate any account to another server, if you want. They post stats on all their servers, so you can decide which one suits you or your customer better. That's much better than all the stuff in only one datacenter. If I have a client in Europe (where I am) I can host them in the UK, etc. They also have a great promo 50% off now. I signed up for a year, so got the whole year half price. I like that too :) I have a 15G resellers account almost for the price of shared.
I was just wandering if the issue of phpSuexec has been resolved there since the thread has been posted a year ago??? Anybody knows?

Anyways, I will keep you posted on how hostnine is doing. I will probably wait a bit and then post a review of them after I've been with them for a while.

webzy

They also have a great promo 50% off now. I signed up for a year, so got the whole year half price. I like that too :)

Dear webzy,

Are you sure about 50%off?Please recheck your bill.Promo "H9" is only for 50% off on first month billing.I have used Hostnine earlier for about 8 months & left due to there support issues.Again ofter a mail from them after couple of months i came back thinking they would have improved.But they have gone to worst now.

They have plenty of servers to choose from all over (many in the US, some in UK, and some in Asia Pacific).
Ya,They have plenty of servers but most of them are overloaded.I think they prefer it when customers just accept downtime and instability.

you can easily migrate any account to another server, if you want.

I complained about one of my site is damn slow(Hosted on node35) & they told server is having some problem & finally they have suspended the site saying corn jobs was overloading there server.Really funny...server status script was picked from there forum which is being used by no. of peoples.I asked them to remove the corn job or script or whatever they want & resume the site.They asked me script will work fine on another node{just think;) .

:agree: Asked to carry on & still after 48 hours they says migration is in progress{Please note: site is having only WHMCS Billing software installed,nothing else}.

"In my opinion "Hostnine" is the worst reseller hosting company I have ever been with.you get absolutely no help in finding out what's wrong?customer support is not helpful and even rude sometimes.More accurate to say that they are just incredibly unprofessional."

Visit there own forum & have a look,you will find it is fludded with there own posts.On clients post no help :D

I don't like Resellerzoom, there hosting is pretty bad for uptime I have stats over it if anyone needs access to it.

Are you sure about 50%off?Please recheck your bill.Promo "H9" is only for 50% off on first month billing.

Yes, I am sure, because I have a PayPal receipt to prove it. It is not first month's bill, it is in fact FIRST BILL, so since I prepaid for a year, my whole year is 50% off.


Ya,They have plenty of servers but most of them are overloaded.I think they prefer it when customers just accept downtime and instability.

Well, so far I have not noticed anything like that, and I have looked at the load of their servers and they look normal. We'll see in days or months to come what kind of review I can write :)


I complained about one of my site is damn slow(Hosted on node35) & they told server is having some problem & finally they have suspended the site saying corn jobs was overloading there server.Really funny...server status script was picked from there forum which is being used by no. of peoples.I asked them to remove the corn job or script or whatever they want & resume the site.They asked me script will work fine on another node{just think;) .

Well, now I remember you. I saw your post on their forum about this issue. Sorry for correcting you, but it's not corn job, but cron job. First I thought it was a typo, but you repeated it so many times so I thought you should know.
And as far as I remember your cron job was set up in such way, that it was eating 115% resources, so they had to stop it to protect other users. I don't remember all the details (even though I am a woman ;), and I really don't care about all the details, but I think you should understand why they suspended your account and not go to forums bashing their name for what appears your fault.

As I said before, I will take my time with them making up my own mind about their service and support, so I can share it with others. I'm not going to change my mind about them because of your ONE post of bad experience with them. I have also seen other people's good posts about them, so there you go.


:agree: Asked to carry on & still after 48 hours they says migration is in progress{Please note: site is having only WHMCS Billing software installed,nothing else}.

So why did you put that cron job there, which checks all their servers uptimes and loads nonstop??? If you ONLY have the billing SW there, there would not be any problem with overloading their server, would there?


"In my opinion "Hostnine" is the worst reseller hosting company I have ever been with.you get absolutely no help in finding out what's wrong?customer support is not helpful and even rude sometimes.More accurate to say that they are just incredibly unprofessional."

There we go... bashing bashing bashing. I don't even have an opinion about them yet, and you are so certain that they are "the worst ever". Bla bla bla. I have actually learned to ignore posts like yours, but this time maybe it's that time of the month and I just HAD to comment. A woman can't help it, you know...


Visit there own forum & have a look,you will find it is fludded with there own posts.On clients post no help :D

I noticed... I is flooded with your posts complaining about stuff left and right.

Why don't you just forget about hostnine and find yourself a nice host with superfast servers, loads of storage, plant your corn jobs... I mean cron jobs all over their servers and ask a super low price for never suspending your account?

There! I have NEVER spilled my guts like that in any forum, but after weeks researching reseller hosts I have had enough of these posters who just go to forums to proclaim that they have found "the worst host ever". Lucky, they have so much money that they were able to test them all (and there are hundreds of thousands of them around).

Good luck all :)

webzy

May I just add that a search of WHT for Host9 will bring up a mixture of views.

There concept is appealing [& windows]

Yes the 50% off is for the first payment.

and
in the nicest possible way, please remember there is a money back protection, but you must request this in accordance with there 'rules'.

Most importantly, post back here when you know if it suites you or not.

Hey Brian de vie, I really like your sig :)))

Ban BS from Business... Ban BS from life

Cooooool! I fully agree. That's my life motto too, although I never quite put it the exact same way.

I always say that "everyone should be open source" (including business) and "if you have anyTHING to hide, there's something wrong with the THING. So change it and open it or don't change it and admit that there's something wrong with it."

I think it goes like that for everybody, everything, always. BS is the tool to hide the THING which is wrong. Ban the BS.

Slightly off topic... was I?

webzy

Thanks webzy for updating me.

Well, now I remember you. I saw your post on their forum about this issue.

Ok agreed,it's my fault but if there is a problem there must be a solution,right? If you have seen my post on there forum & gone through that you must have seen the proofs posted over there.If,even after 5 days also they can't help a client then what kind of support they have?

Very true,i can switch my site to any another host & i am going to do the same.But simply switching the host & keeping quite is just like allowing them to carry-on & cheat others too.

Even i can provide you a prrof of each word written here.One of my known friend has also taken reseller hosting & closed it within 20 days due to support issues & when he ask for refund they replied it can not be given as you have paid only for a month with 50% off & we have to still pay for whmcs.If,you want i can ask him to come & post that mail here.

Even i have gone through this forum & i have seen how many peoples have given a bad review about Hostnine.At last for any issue "H9" will come with a answer it was a free service.

Anyway best of luck & hope you will not have any issue with them.

OK. This will sound really strange after what I have written before, but I have to admit that I am now cancelling my account with them.
I have read through their Terms of Service, so according to that I should get my money back without any questions asked.

I don't know if I should write a review of them after only one day, but here's what I wrote to them:

Reason: I did not find the advertized service to be what I expected. Too many little problems all over the place. I found myself wanting to write 10 support tickets just my first day after opening the account. I feel that even if I were helped by your knowledgeable staff, I do not want to have to write multiple support tickets just to get set up. I expected to just sign up, follow your instructions for setting up my account and my clients' accounts and only contact you if there were serious problems. It seems that, even though you guys sound like great guys from what you post in your forum, the website is quite a mess, there is a lot of outdated information in your knowledge base, so it's very misleading. I hope you don't expect your customers browsing the forum and google for hours just to find answers to simple questions. That should be there in the knowledge base, clearly organized. Your site should have no broken or misleading links (which it has). If you answer to some people quickly on your forum, why don't you answer to all people quickly? All the servers which I tried (UK, Texas, Cali, etc.) have slightly different settings, so when I create an account for one customer, it differs from another customer's account (cPanel features, DNS Zone settings, etc.)
I do not want to sound angry, because I am not angry at all :) I just want you to know exactly why I am canceling my account. I hope you great success in the future... and please, fix those little bugs in your site and service here and there, or else you might loose customers unnecessarily. I wished to stay with you after a couple of problems I noticed, because nobody's perfect, but they just kept coming and coming.
Sorry, but I have no time to be setting up my DNS for two days or browsing your forum to figure other things out, which should be explained to me in one place on your site or even in a welcome email.

Sincerely,


So here you have my "little" review of hostnine. I guess I won't be writing a review of their long term service or uptimes, because I won't be with them that long.

webzy

Yes I found I was 'missmatched' when I tried host9.

There concept is great, but the execution only seems to suit the more 'talented' people, not so good for people like myself 'technicaly challenged'.

You might considertrying innohosting, they have both UK & US servers
and a good reputation.

Dear webzy,

Best of luck & hope you get back your money in time.My main intrest going with Hostnine was "Free WHMC" given with reseller account.There only i done the mistake.I though to have them as backup & was really not going to setup anymore site on there server.I have WHM Master reseller account & windows reseller account from two different places & really happy with them.

This will sound really strange after what I have written before, but I have to admit that I am now cancelling my account with them.

Hope you find a good reseller Host.If you find any good windows reseller host update me,will be happy to tryout.

Goodluck & will wait to hear from you again.

Oooops!

I got my first warning today :) and it's a funny one.
When I joined the forum I read all the rules (even though I never used to do that before) and went to make my signature knowing I am only allowed 2 colors and black. Then for some reason I went totally crazy with the colors... like a little girl who got her new set of crayons and started drawing rainbows... and forgot all about the rules :P

Anyways, this is my first warning:


Signatures may contain 2 colors plus black. You've broken that guideline by having a signature with 8,242,712 colors. That's a record. Please take a moment to review the guidelines for signatures, before you replace it. Thanks!


Well, not 8 million colors, but ONLY 24.

OK I better go and change it now.

webzy

Oooops!

I am only allowed 2 colors and black.
webzy
Hmmmmmm :think:
2 colours PLUS black !
I'm missing an opportunity !



eindia7
I know premiumreseller, offer both linux & windows, us servers, have a good rep I believe.

So what next after I dumped hostnine...

I have done even more research this time and asked innohosting for their offer as well as searched more info on ubiquity hosting.

After thinking really hard about all the options I settled for ubiquity's VPS (great coupon I found too - 55% off first bill + 15% off whole year). The price with both discounts ended up lower than most hosts would charge me for reseller's account.

Here's what I got:
Web Space 20 GB (In their New York City datacentre, because it's the best for me, since I am in Europe. They also have Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles)
Monthly Data Transfer (Bandwidth) 250GB
Minimum Guaranteed ECC DDRII RAM 512MB
Equal Guaranteed CPU in VE class
Host Unlimited Domain Names
45 Day Money Back Guarantee
99.9% Uptime Service Level Agreement
FREE InterWorx or Plesk Panel License + Install (I took InterWorx because I really like it. In my opinion it's way better than cPanel)
$150 in FREE Google / Yahoo! Ad Credit
NO Setup Fee / NO Hidden Fees
NO Commitments / Contracts
Fully Managed Service
24/7/365 Email / Ticket Support System
24/7/365 Live Support System
(I have tested their live support system. Got a guy, Allan, on live chat and later also on the phone - great support, answered questions no problem, made good-for-me suggestions, etc. And it was in the middle of the night for them close to Chicago)
24/7/365 Toll-Free / International Hotlines
Online Documentation / Flash tutorials
Virtuozzo for access to my VPS (reboot, etc.)
Private Nameservers
2 free Dedicated IPs
All the features of their Reseller's Accounts
All the features of their Shared Accounts
They promise to set everything up within 24 hours (they do screening to "protect our clients and ourselves from fraud and spammers"), but since I talked with Allan on the phone, he promised to have it ready much sooner than that (he said 30 minutes, but I told him to take his time and set up my private nameservers and dedicated IPs, so he said couple of hours max).

I am happy for now. Normal price per month of what I got is $49.95, but with all the discounts and paying for a year in advance I am paying only $19.11 per month.

Of course, I promise to write a review of them in weeks and months to come. So far I am really impressed and my wallet didn't suffer much.

webzy
(I have to fix this sig before I get too famous for breaking records)

What does
"All the features of their Reseller's Accounts
All the features of their Shared Accounts"

mean?

Aren;t you going to have a whole tone of work setting it for reselling? No whcms, domain reselling etc

I only ask becuase I'm in the same position as you, I'm in Toronto and Innhosting's stuff just doesn't load fast enough, and from what I've read RZ is all sketchy now.

Well I presume their reseller plans come with all that and so he gets it too.

Although he could get those things seperately albeit at some expense.

I hope VPS works out for you.

That's funny. I have inno and the speeds are excellent. I'm in NV and my server is in LA. My clients have all told me that the speed is one reason they go with me.

What does
"All the features of their Reseller's Accounts
All the features of their Shared Accounts"

mean?

Aren;t you going to have a whole tone of work setting it for reselling? No whcms, domain reselling etc

I only ask becuase I'm in the same position as you, I'm in Toronto and Innhosting's stuff just doesn't load fast enough, and from what I've read RZ is all sketchy now.

The ping is simply the response time, not an accurate indication of how fast something will load. It does have an impact, but not unless your looking at 300ms+.

If our site is loading fast for you, then it means your site will load up at the same speed, if not - faster.

Actually, i found a couple of other sites hosted on Inno (wordpress installations etc) and they seem to load very fast, faster then the innohosting.com webpage... weird. Looks like i'm going for inno

Actually, i found a couple of other sites hosted on Inno (wordpress installations etc) and they seem to load very fast, faster then the innohosting.com webpage... weird. Looks like i'm going for inno
Page loading will also be effected by 'design'

Hi step and others.

Ubiquity doesn't have whmcs. They have InterWorx, so it's split into SiteWorx and NodeWorx (like cPanel and WHM). They have a slightly different set of features from cPanel/WHM, but I like InterWorx very much and I believe switching from many years on cPanel to InterWorx will be a good thing.

As for the reseller and shared account features on my vps, they are set up for me automatically (it's a managed vps) so I won't have to do anything myself other than using it like you'd use your cPanel/WHM.

Yes, good luck with my first vps :)

BTW, I did the ping test of all their sites today, and for me, being in Europe, New York City was the fastest, then Chicago, then Dallas, and then Seattle and Los Angeles. West Coast was almost two times slower for me than NY. Chicago and Dallas were OK, but not as fast.

Here are Ubiquity's test IPs:
* Los Angeles, CA: 72.37.221.165
* Seattle WA: 216.6.228.130
* New York, NY: 216.6.235.124
* Dallas, TX: 216.6.231.22
* Chicago, IL: 72.37.224.2

webzy