Hello,

I am an experienced webdesigner/webprogrammer but not much of a system administrator.
As my business is growing I would like a more steady approach to hosting, to advise my clients and maybe to eventually become a reseller in some fashion.

In order to get some perspective on the huge amount of info available here, I would like to ask for a bit more background on this community and the hosting world.

Are many of you guys hosts or resellers yourselves?

How would you describe the hosting landscape?
I understand that a lot of tips seem to be about identifying a "serious" or "adult" host.
Are there only a few "autonomous" hosts at the top of a great big heap of resellers? Or?

And for the designers/programmers:
How do you prefer to arrange hosting for your clients and why?
Do you find a new host for every client and let them deal with it themselves?
Do you have a steady relation or business arrangement with one host?
Do you resell for clients?
And if you are a reseller for clients, how much time of your business does this take up?
Pros and cons?

Other thoughts?

Thanks very much :)
J.

Good evening J,

There's a great deal of both 'resellers' and 'providers'. Note that the majority of us are reselling on some level -- even though we may own our own hardware & infrastructure we're probably selling someone else bandwidth or space.

With that said you need to identify exactly what your needs are & what you want to provide your clientele. Are you going to be able to provide them with the same level of service that other companies are?

Is it something you can devote all that much time to? Doing it half-assed isn't worth your while, so get the research out of the way ahead of time -- not halfway through the trip.

As far as those designers / programmers go, a large number of them just grab a good ol' reseller account or partner directly with an existing provider. Some don't want to have to provide direct support for web hosting to their clientele so they pick & choose a company that can cater *very* well to their needs.

Anywho! :)
Best of luck with the hunt & let us know how things go.

To the OP -

The best advice I can provide is to find a host that you can partner with. Delegate as much of the Hosting related tasks as possible and allow yourself to focus on what you do best. Your clients will ultimately receive better service.



Kind Regards,

or you could just get a reseller account with a company that offers support to your clients.