I wasn't sure of a better title so excuse me if I chose the wrong title for this thread.

As I will be opening a shared hosting business soon (*just* shared web hosting), I have been thinking of a lot of different things lately. One of them is the separation of the business site/support system and customer sites.

I have a dedicated server that I definitely plan to put my customer sites on. I could also place my business site and support/billing system on it as well.

The problem there, obviously, is that if my server gets knocked off the web, my business website goes down as well and with it goes the support system.

Customers aren't going to be happy if they see their site down and run to my support system to realize they can't contact me!

I will be using a PHP/MySQL site as my business website and WHMCS as my billing/support system.

If I move my business site and billing/support system to an external area (in a different datacenter even), if my server(s) go down customers can still maintain full contact with me. This means e-mail, support ticket, live chat, and any other support mechanism I choose to offer will work. In addition, I will have the main site up to post an announcement about the downtime.

Obviously, if at all possible, I should separate my business site and billing/support system from my customers' sites.

So, I have a few questions about it. Please only reply if you have specific experience with WHMCS and it's requirements (HDD, Bandwidth, CPU/RAM, Prereq. Software, etc...).

1) What kind of hosting account could run it? Shared? VPS?

2) Is it safe/secure to run WHMCS in a shared environment? What about VPS?

3) When looking for a shared/VPS provider, is there any particular special software I should look for? (Particularly any software required by WHMCS)

4) What about automatic billing, suspension, etc... Is this supported during this separation? IE, can I have WHMCS know the details for my dedicated server and automatically suspend those accounts if payment is not made? This would imply that the automatic billing would be handled on the shared/VPS provider's side.

5) What kind of specs should I look for in a shared provider for this solution? What about VPS? I already have nameservers, dns, etc... I'd be looking for 1 dedicated IP to support my SSL, though.

6) Can you recommend any specific shared/VPS providers for this matter? Reliability and uptime is the most important thing. If I am taking my business site and billing/support system off of my dedicated server, I'm exchanging some control over the situation for the hopes of my site being online no matter what problems arise.

7) Is there a better solution than separation? The goal is to make sure customers can access my site and billing/support system even during the toughest of downtimes. It should take a widespread disaster (or a huge stroke of bad luck) to knock both customer sites and the business site down along with the billing/support system.


Thank you,
Jerry Smith

I would run your site on a VPS or reseller account using your own nameservers to keep you anonymous from the provider you get it from. I would also make sure you find a host who has good support and a decent reputation as far as uptime etc because to the opposite of your post above you do not want your customers site to be up and yours down when they need support for something.

You should be able to disable/activate accounts through WHM in WHMCS from your providers server you purchase your reseller/VPS from to your server without any issues.

Ok i'm not *fully* sure I understand your post, so excuse me if my questions are "stupid".

I have offsite DNS so as far as DNS is concerned i'd just point the needed records to the server/account that my business site and billing/support system was on.

Second, my goal is exactly as you stated. If customer sites are down, I want my site to be up. I realize I can't get 100% uptime. I just want to eliminate a single point of failure and provide the best uptime I possibly can for my main site.

I don't see why I would need a reseller account though. Can you clarify why this would be necessesary? I would not be adding any accounts to that server. Is there any other reason I would need reseller?

I would like to get a plain shared hosting solution if I can find one that is truly right for my needs.

If not, perhaps a reseller.

As a last resort, VPS.

I'd really prefer not to go with VPS though.

At this time, I cannot afford a second dedicated server.