Hello,

First of all I would like to congratulate you on the very good community that you have built here. This place is very friendly and the information provided is very useful.

So, the reason of my post is that we ( siteowners.com ) are in search of a web hosting reseller. Our research will last more than 2 months, and the new services will be launched possibly on June-July. In the meantime I would like to collect some information, especially from people who use other companies to resell hosting and have a great experience in that.

What we are looking for is :
1. In the beggining we will resell only web accounts ( virtual hosting ) and no dedicated servers. Any company suggestions for that?
2. Integrate instant payments into the sign up procedure. Any recommendations?
3. Investigate the possible risks that a web hosting company should be aware of. Any experience on that issue would be appreciated.


Regarding the estimated members, we have not completed any research yet, but we are expecting over 500 web accounts within the first 6 months.

Best Regards,

Below is my 2 cents on this.

What we are looking for is :
1. In the beggining we will resell only web accounts ( virtual hosting ) and no dedicated servers. Any company suggestions for that?
*** Why not just get 1 dedicated server? You can find them from as low as $100 and up for a good one. This way to can make the most of your profits. The down side to this is that you have to maintain everything and usally with reselling you only have to worry about setting up accounts.

2. Integrate instant payments into the sign up procedure. Any recommendations?
*** Most credit card processing companys will allow to to have your customers redirected to a order page upon a verified credit card.

3. Investigate the possible risks that a web hosting company should be aware of. Any experience on that issue would be appreciated.
***The only risk I would say is to not don't think you will get 500 people in 6 months. Though it is possible you would have to have some real good rates.

Hi tymonball,

First of all thank you for your reply. I would like to add some comments on your answers :

1. As you are saying a dedicated server is far more affordable, but it might cause many problems as we would like to have a full automated solution.

2. We are looking for a fully integrated online payment solution. If that is possible without redirecting the visitors to a sign up page located on another website.

3. We will invest over $10K in advertising our web hosting service. $20/member is a good rate that can bring us the 500 clients in the following 6 months.

Best regards,

John, he is saying that (#1) running a dedicated server is different than reselling. *You* are responsible for maintaining and updating the server, fixing it, or paying to have it fixed if she's broken (for whatever reason). If this doesn't sound like your ball of twine, then maybe starting out as a reseller would be better for you. It isn't difficult, but you do have to know more or at least be willing to learn/find the info if you run your own server.

2. You can have the signup all on your site or server (doesn't really matter for the most part, the process to set ip up is similar). You'd need a merchant account, payment processor, gateway, etc., with a secure certificate which can be installed on the site/server. How automated you want the whole thing is an issue, but really that is a whole seperate thread in itself (one that has actually been covered a couple of times).

<<Admin edit : post thrown out for AIT spam>>

And you say this company is great? I had time to post half this message before thier price page came up. I notice that the site is slow all together. Also when I ping the site and all I get is time out requests. They do have a great site design.