I'm a web designer and I also do a lot of local seo. So far I've been suggesting hosting services to clients and therefore losing money. I've been thinking about getting a reseller account so I could have more control over my clients account, make a little extra money, and it would save me a lot of time to have most of my clients in one place.

I've been lurking around this forum for about a week now trying to find a good reseller host. I've heard some great things about Innohosting and I am ready to buy from them except for one thing, they dont offer sftp or ssh access for the reseller account. I can live without the ssh access for now because I've heard that Innohosting has great support. I've used standard FTP for quite some time and recently I've had 4 sites hacked within a few days of each other, all after doing a lot of ftp uploads to them. I assume the hacker intercepted my ftp password, which isn't that difficult because it is in plain text, and it was all down hill from there.

I am looking for a reseller who offers user support. I can do most myself I am often busy doing other things and don't have a lot of time for it.

Anyways I'm looking for a host that provides user end support, sftp, ssh (not a huge requirement but I would like it), I don't need massive amounts of space or bandwidth, most sites are low traffic (1-2k visitors a month) but I am expanding so I will need enough.

I've looking into hostgator and have heard some good reviews and its service matches most of my requirements, but I haven't heard anything overly great about them.

I talked to Innohosting about sftp and ssh and they said that they do offer those services with their VPS. I am a little nervous about jumping in to the deep end before I have my sea legs (if that makes any sense). What is involved in running a VPS? I want to create client accounts on it and hopefully still have some user support available. Like I said I can do most support myself and I don't mind hiring someone to help with it in the future but I don't have the funds for that yet.

Also when it comes to user support how much is really needed? Could a single person take care of it for 20 clients and still do design and other stuff, or does it take a lot of time?

I know there are a lot of questions here but I figured that I can get a more detailed response then if I asked, I need a host help me.

Thanks
-Nick

Another host that provided end user support is resellerzoom.com but I'm not sure if they allow sftp or ssh with scp, best to contact their Sales department to confirm.

Getting the sftp or ssh with scp isn't that hard but throwing end user support in on top of that and that really limits your choices. If innohosting cannot help you, then resellerzoom is the only other end user support company that comes to mind. If they cannot help you, then your best bet may be to just go with a reseller provider who offers sftp or ssh with scp without the end user support.

You can make things such as a detailed knowledge-base and maybe purchase/make video tutorials and maybe that will help tone down your support request load a bit.

I shall agree that finding a host that provides end user support is hard.
But since you've asked, I think that a person can support 100++ users without any help and will have plenty of time for design etc. Tho, this depends on the web hosting company that you will get the reseller account and their services' reliability.

What type of support issues do users usually have? I know that all kinds of issues probably come up but is there a problem that comes up more often?

I've decided that I can probably do all the user end support. Can anyone suggest a reputable hosting company that offers SFTP or FTPS?

Also why dont a lot of hosting companies offer these services to resellers? At least the ones that seem to have high praise don't offer SFTP or FTPS.

To me it seems like a house builder not offering locks on the front door. Maybe I'm a bit paranoid.

Also looking for a reseller host that offers SFTP and SSH...

Thank you.

Most hosts disallow SSH access because it's often used to run things that shouldn't be run within a shared/reseller environment.

20 clients shouldn't be submitting that many tickets, the majority of tickets are received within the first week or two of them signing up. As long as you're running a stable service with a good knowledgebase, you won't see that many tickets after that time - so you may be able to provide the support yourself if you can't find a host that ticks all the boxes.