Hello all,

I have been hosting my clients off of my own servers (first on RedHat and then FreeBSD) for many years now, but have grown tired of maintaining them. The hosting aspect is a very small portion of my business (essentially just a service I provide to certain clients who use us for other technical and creative services) and server maintenance is eating up more time than is reasonable, so I am looking at other solutions. I am leaning very strongly toward getting a reseller account, even though I am not looking forward to the actual migration process. Right now I muck about in everything directly, so WHM and cPanel should end up being easier in the long run, but first I'll need to make it through the learning curve.

Has anybody else switched from their own hands on servers to a reseller setup? I'd really like to hear about your experience. Since this is such a small and stable portion of my business it looks like a reseller account from a competent company should be able to meet my needs, although I have explored the option of a managed dedicated server as well.

Of course I am also having trouble finding the right reseller to go with. I am shocked by how many are out there, and it has been exhausting trying to sort through them. As I find ones that seem like the might be reasonable choices, I send an email to sales with some basic questions and then see how I feel about the timeliness and quality of their answers.

The ones that have made it to my more serious list are (in no particular order):
dotable
clook
hosttitan
kionic
wirenine
hostdime
theprimehost

If anybody has any experiences to share about a company I should definitely add to this list of possibles (or reasons to remove any of these) please let me know.

I am looking for serious companies with stellar uptime and speeds and very solid customer service (actual access to technical people, not somebody just reading off of a script) who communicate in full sentences and read my entire email so they know what steps I've already taken. I am not in search of some too good to be true budget deal. I do need a company that allows overselling. I also need to be able to add dedicated IP address at reasonable rates.

Have you thought about a VPS? It will give you the flexability of dedicated with less maintenance.

Are your clients big? Is moeny a concern for you?

Add downtownhost to your list. The owner is 24 hours online via Live Chat (don't know if he ever sleeps) and also is member of WHT. He offers cpanel for control panel.

Have you thought about a VPS? It will give you the flexability of dedicated with less maintenance.

A VPS has it's own operating system and it's seperated and standalone, so it needs the same maintenance as a dedicated server.

Switching from a dedicated server environment to a reseller hosting environment could be a great move for you, based on what you have said in your post.

The switch to a reseller hosting environment will give you a break both on price and in overall headaches. If you're not able, for whatever reason, to perform system maintenance on a dedicated machine then it would be a good move. You also get a lot of benefits in a reseller hosting environment that a dedicated server simply can't offer. Moving from a dedicated environment to a reseller environment is often a step up, not down :)


Simon

I only have small clients, but most of then depend on their websites being up, and there are some complicated custom scripts.

I am not looking to waste money and I certainly intend to comparison shop amongst the top choices to get the best deal, but considering I currently pay for a T-1, plus back up bandwidth, plus the cost of all the physical components of the servers and the electricity etc, to run them and the AC to keep the office cool enough. Things are definitely going to get cheaper than my current outlay.

I know there will be some ease of configuration advantages, but there is definitely something about being able to walk over and hit the reboot button, as well as decide for yourself exactly what you want to allow that is comforting. There will be times that I miss that control. Then again... you can also trip over the power cord.

I will take a look at downtownhost. Thanks.

A VPS has it's own operating system and it's seperated and standalone, so it needs the same maintenance as a dedicated server.

Yes, that was going to me my comment as well. A VPS would be a large step down while not negating any of the real management concerns here. HOWEVER, the total cost of ownership would be significantly less.

I am not looking to waste money and I certainly intend to comparison shop amongst the top choices to get the best deal, but considering I currently pay for a T-1, plus back up bandwidth, plus the cost of all the physical components of the servers and the electricity etc, to run them and the AC to keep the office cool enough. Things are definitely going to get cheaper than my current outlay.

No matter who you go with, you will be saving significant money, both directly and indirectly vs maintaining your own server and T1 line. Having said this, I am not sure you can comparison shop when it comes to hosting - I "think" the best way to go about this is to assign value scores to certain criteria (ie history, speed, uptime history, flexibility, platforms, etc - ie whatever is really important to you). Space and Bandwidth have become really difficult criteria to measure when comparing hosting providers - and no matter what, there will always be less expensive options.

I agree with Simon here - a move to a good reseller environment - will be a very large step up for you and will offer you some flexibility that you currently cannot possibly have.

If I were you, I would keep what you've got, and add a server management (outsourced) team to your mix. There are reviews here on a few who range less than $30/month.

Serenow, good for you!

Some people focus on moving from dual cores to quad cores to octal cores, and even write about the end of shared hosting. But that approach ignores how much cost savings can be had with a shared or reseller package, and even more so, the time savings you mention.

Are you actually using Cpanel? if yes, then the move to another Cpanel host should be pretty much smooth, since you're root on your server you can do full backup of all your accounts, then, ask to your new host to restore those backups and you'll have all the accounts restored, with the same setting, email accounts, subdomains, mysql, etc, and if the transfer include your "main account" even the account ownership should be set as it were on your dedi.

A VPS has it's own operating system and it's seperated and standalone, so it needs the same maintenance as a dedicated server.


However i will recommend fully managed VPS .. two companies i can recommend . wiredtree.com and modvps.com

If you buy fully manage VPS then you don't have to maintain any thing plus you will be having a dedicated resource too ..

You could still have dedicated servers however rent from whatever company who sell them fully managed, or have outsourced server management.

You could still have dedicated servers however rent from whatever company who sell them fully managed, or have outsourced server management.

but if you compare the pricing of managed Dedicated server and VPS .. you will find a lot of difference .. you can have managed VPS under $50 .. however managed dedicated server with good company start from 200$ minimum

True but this depends on how many clients he has. His post says "own servers" so using more than one would suggest the need for more resources than a VPS can provide.