Hi Guys,

Being a newbie to this forum i am not sure whether i am posting this in the right section. Do direct me if it needs to be relocated.

My question for the those who provide reseller plans out here is that as a reseller i would like to be a little free from the burden of having to monitor each and every account that i sell.(active monitoring)

Hence liability in terms of individual accounts be defaced or being misused should not translate to the resellers account. ( Maybe i am wording it wrongly but it is more of a question then a suggestion)

No offense meant to --Rameen ( InnoHosting)-- but i had almost ascertained myself on getting there reseller option inspite of the - No Raid- provision but taking a look at this really made me stop in my track.

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4.0 Reseller and VPS (Virtual Private Server) Responsibility

4.1 The reseller/VPS customer is liable and responsible for all actions of their account and subaccounts created by the reseller/VPS customer. As the reseller/VPS customer you agree to accept all responsibility and liability for your actions and the actions of your subusers either directly or indirectly.

4.2 Terms of Service violations as a result of a subuser account being exploited with or without knowledge will be the responsibility of the reseller/VPS account holder.

4.2a Resellers & VPS customers are responsible for the content of the accounts they create. If those accounts are hacked/abused, the reseller will be accountable for all costs and liability.

4.3 The reseller & VPS account holder agrees to actively monitor their subaccounts to ensure all subaccounts and their own account are abiding by all of InnoHosting's policies and Terms Of Service

4.4 The legal liability and legal responsibility of the subaccounts of the reseller/VPS belongs to the reseller/VPS customer.

4.5 InnoHosting reserves the right to financially charge the reseller/VPS customer for any contract violation.

4.6 If an IP assigned to a VPS client is blocked and/or blacklisted, InnoHosting will impose a non-negotiable $100.00 penalty fee payable within 24hrs. InnoHosting reserves the right to take further action should this bill remain unpaid.

4.7 Resellers are responsible for ensuring that the domain they choose upon sign up is the domain they wish to use. If the reseller requests to have the domain name of the main reseller account changed, a $25.00 one-time admin fee is charged.
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It would make sense if that individual account is taken off or withheld but making the reseller pay for everything wrong that a client account has performed seems a little too hard a rule to live with.

Do not get me wrong ( it is not that i plan to get clients who spam or otherwise) but then its always best to keep all realities in view before making the decision.

The other resellers that i had considered over the time were

1. Hostgator -- They come highly recommended here , however there plan structure ( shared vs reseller) doesn't quite appeal to me. When i say that i am not implying that i need more space or bandwidth for my $'s, just that there offer in the broader picture does not appeal. No offense meant here as i am sure everyone out here who has reported great reviews have had their good experiences to go by.

2. mddhosting - I suppose from the reviews out here that they are good ( btw there page do load very fast .. could be more of a css/html issue then server loads though) but they have a very tight policy as well.

Quote : "

2.) Content
All services provided by MDDHosting may only be used for lawful purposes. The laws of the State of Indiana and the United States of America apply.

The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless MDDHosting from any claims resulting from the use of our services.

Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorized copying of music, books, photographs, or any other copyrighted work. The offer of sale of any counterfeit merchandise of a trademark holder will result in the immediate termination of your account. If you believe that your copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please email abuse@MDDHosting.com with the information required. A list of required information may be found here. If the request is of a licensing issue, we may require further documentation.

Examples of unacceptable material on all Shared, Reseller and Dedicated Servers include:
IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, image, filedump, or banner-ad services (similar to rapidshare, photobucket, or commercial banner ad rotation), topsites, commercial audio streaming (more than one or two streams), Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs(HYIP) or related sites, Investment sites (FOREX, egold exchange), sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s), AutoSurf sites, Bank Debentures, Bank Debenture Trading Programs, Prime Banks Programs, lottery sites, muds / rpg's, hate sites, hacker focused sites/archives/programs, or sites promoting illegal activities, IP Scanners, Brute Force Programs, Mail Bombers and Spam Scripts. Forums that distribute or link to warez content is prohibited.

Acceptable material on Dedicated Servers:
Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Image Hosting sites and muds / rpg's

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and will be removed from our servers with or without notice.

Failure to respond to email from our abuse department within 48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via troubleticket/email and will have a response within 48 hours.

If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us at abuse@MDDHosting.com and we will be happy to assist you.

Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography (Lolita):

Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be suspended immediately without notice. "


They are however flexible about misuse first time but not further on.

" Resellers: we will suspend the site in question and will notify you so you may terminate the account. We will further monitor your activity; more than one infraction of this type may result in the immediate termination of your account."

So on that grounds a little more flexible then Innohosting.


Checked a couple more and they all have tight policies, so am sure it is more of a rule. However is there any way i can reduce the monitoring effort without getting myself blamed . My requirements are not with reference to space/bandwidth but quality uptime and speed should be a premium for which i am not hesitant with my $'s.


Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance


Cheers !

As you said, this is pretty much the norm among all providers. You will be held liable for anything you clients do. You can of course pass on the charges to them, that's if they stick around ;).

Probably the only way to reduce your monitoring effort is to increase it when they sign up. Scrutinise every order you receive. You might get some clients who genuinely didn't read your ToS and did something wrong, but I'm sure most hosts will be OK with that, as long as you don't make a habit of it.

Our policies are there for the simple reason of having proper protocol in place.. We do on many occassions understand the perception of the client and work with the customer. In our history of almost 5 years hosting, only 2 customers have ever had the full force of the ToS enforced. The rest of the thousands of customers we deal with, we have worked it out with them.

That said, we aren't willing to take the liability of the reseller. I believe if you are going to start a business, then you should be prepared to face and accept the responsibilities associated.

Thank you for considering us however, and all the best with your search.. :agree:

Quote :"
Probably the only way to reduce your monitoring effort is to increase it when they sign up. Scrutinise every order you receive. You might get some clients who genuinely didn't read your ToS and did something wrong, but I'm sure most hosts will be OK with that, as long as you don't make a habit of it.
"
Rameen:
"
That said, we aren't willing to take the liability of the reseller. I believe if you are going to start a business, then you should be prepared to face and accept the responsibilities associated.
"

To address both the comments i would like to make my point a little clearer,and please guys i am not here to offend anyone but to get a clear solution to my problem

It is not the monitoring alone that bothers me. I can hire someone for certain issues like spam and others but then there are other issues like assessing/determining usage of cracked scripts, copyright infringement content which is a herculean if not an impossible task to accomplish. Under such a circumstance i would be an honest victim to a rogue client , and that is the circumstance i do worry about.

This is not my main business but i agree with Rameen that having started this as an offer i should be taking responsibility for it. However that would also be defined by the nature of the responsibility and the scope of it.

As i had mentioned in the first post itself that i wanted to shift from multiple shared to single reseller to make it convenient for me ( which it will become)and i would appreciate people if they were supportive to it. I appreciate Rameen's fast reply ( which is sort of expected of him from what i have seen ) and thats the service which actually got me looking at Innohosting.

So if anyone can tell me how do i verify that every component of each and every site which i resell is legal and so is the content ( which can obviously change with time), i will be glad to follow the clue and get my problems solved.

Cheers !

They are however flexible about misuse first time but not further on.

" Resellers: we will suspend the site in question and will notify you so you may terminate the account. We will further monitor your activity; more than one infraction of this type may result in the immediate termination of your account."

So on that grounds a little more flexible then Innohosting.

Generally we won't terminate an account unless there are several incidents (such as would happen if you marketed to warez groups).

The policy is there so that we can take action if there is need to do so but we do understand that sometimes you will get clients that do not follow your (or our) terms of service.

Checked a couple more and they all have tight policies, so am sure it is more of a rule. However is there any way i can reduce the monitoring effort without getting myself blamed .
My advice would be to contact the potential hosts and ask them to explain how they handle the situations and how they have been handled in the past.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance


Cheers !
No problem, hopefully I've been helpful :)