Take the Aluminum reseller package and you get:

24gb Diskpace
250gb Bandwidth

How on earth are you ever going to make any money reselling this when Hostgator themselves offer 350gb disk, 3,000gb transfer for under $5. Same with godaddy.

I am just curious as to wether people on here recommending hostgator are actually running a webhost business or if they are just using the reseller account for personal hosting?

As a reseller I don't see how you could make any money with the incompetitive packages you would need to offer the end user. Something like heart internets unlimited bandwidth+storage, seems more realistic.

Take the Aluminum reseller package and you get:

24gb Diskpace
250gb Bandwidth

How on earth are you ever going to make any money reselling this when Hostgator themselves offer 350gb disk, 3,000gb transfer for under $5. Same with godaddy.

I am just curious as to wether people on here recommending hostgator are actually running a webhost business or if they are just using the reseller account for personal hosting?

As a reseller I don't see how you could make any money with the incompetitive packages you would need to offer the end user. Something like heart internets unlimited bandwidth+storage, seems more realistic.

Unlimited webspace and bandwidth sounds much less realistic.

Regardless of the company, you still have to compete with them.. Just don't compete on their level and go for a different niche.. :agree:

yes, it's all niche. all of my customers are people i know. i know them, they know me. they contact me not only for hosting, but also things like setting up outlook express...

You can't compete with everyone, its about offering something customers want, wether that be good support and a high level of service or something else to differentiate yourselves from the masses.

Something like heart internets unlimited bandwidth+storage, seems more realistic.

Interesting what the public perceptions can be. Even there, you're still in reality limited by the amount of CPU usage the company can give you at $40.

1TB of data transfer alone, if used, can mean a cost of $100+ for the host. That doesn't take into account the cost of the space you'll be using, electricity, support, advertising etc. and a markup.

If you'd sell huge packages off an unlimited account, you'd be overselling by huge margins without any statistical data to back you up. It like betting without knowing anything about the odds.

Something like heart internets unlimited bandwidth+storage, seems more realistic.

Sorry but there is no such thing like that, believe me. As you grow in your reseller business you will realize that you cant offer "unlimited" anything. The world is more complex than that. Granted, there are a number of providers with higher capacity offerings than hostgator but, like everyone else has said, Its all about getting a niche and specializing on providing a service to that niche. I for one have not very many clients but the ones that I have are willing to pay me 10 times the money that I pay hostgator for my aluminum plan. So why do I stick with them, well cause I can rest assured of quality service and support. Thats why you see so many good reviews about hostgator. Its not about the space and bandwidth they offer. Its about the quality of service and support and uptime. Because if these things are poor, however much bandwidth and space you are offered, your business will fail. Granted.

Major overselling.
This may attract customers at first.. but after not so long they generally realise the "errors of their ways" and find a host which does not oversell.

There was one story from an old customer of mine; hostgator had 600 customers on one server, when they, according to the packages, couldn't have had 1% of that.

Hosts like that also limit ways of using up all of that.. like no uploads.. no streaming.. etc.

absolutely you can, I am using hostgator right now and host over 150 sites. the first thing you need to realize is most sites done need that much space. Most of my site are on a 250MB plan and that suits them fine. Next you have to find your niche, be it local customers, a niche idea or other, there is a way to tap into the market. If you are a designer, it is a nice addon to have proper hosting as well. you have to basically show people they do not need 350GB of space, and if they did use that space on the big oversellers, their account would be suspended anyway!

next you should also resell domains, SSL certs, and if your not a designer why not re-sell templates as well like from template monster.

hth
john

Most webhosts offer bigger numbers on their shared plans because the chance someone use all the space is minimum. That is not case with reseller accounts as resellers sooner or later are going to use all the space/transfer.