I wish to start selling Multiple domains hosting packages to customers. Can anybody tell me what limitations should I have so that the packages are not misused or resources are not violated?

You can limit the resources in term of diskspace and bandwidth. If you'll offer unlimited hosting, then they can probably use for illegal activities.

If you are using cPanel or another control panel, simply create a reseller package with disk and bandwidth limits. That way, they can host multiple domains, and you can make their money ;)

Can anybody tell me what limitations should I have so that the packages are not misused or resources are not violated?

The more strict you are on disk space and data transfer, the fewer the chances of a customer abusing the server. The more strict you are on disk space and data transfer, the less competitive you are (or... appear to be).

So, only you can know what the right answer is your business.

Back some years ago, Hostgator made their USP in the form of "host unlimited domains for only $9.95" or something like that. (not that it was all that unique of an offer, but they went ahead with it nevertheless) In hindsight, it was a clever thing to advertise an acceptable form of "unlimited", at a time when most other hosts stayed away from such offers for fear of fierce critique from webmasters and fellow hosts.

If you must offer unlimited, provide a "free upgrade" policy. This means your clients must keep asking you to upgrade when they've used up their current limit.

So you can initially give out 1GB space with 10GB b/w for example, then your clients can request more and you simply give more to them if after you check their site seems to be legit and does not violate your AUP.

That's a good approach.

Good luck!

If you must offer unlimited, provide a "free upgrade" policy. This means your clients must keep asking you to upgrade when they've used up their current limit.

So you can initially give out 1GB space with 10GB b/w for example, then your clients can request more and you simply give more to them if after you check their site seems to be legit and does not violate your AUP.

That's a good approach.

Good luck!

That is a good idea. However later on that could take a toll on your support department if you got a bunch of those requests coming in. However, they should be minimal, even if you have a couple thousand customers.

Chances are that at most, you will see a dozen to two dozen people out of 2000 customers who will even use a percentage of your account. So you can easily deal with them on a case to case basis.

Well, I have fixed packages and am not going to provide anything unlimited. I want to formulate the terms and conditions and wish to have inputs on what to add to prevent misuse of resources and also reduce the support cost as multiple domains hosting will not reap big profits for me and at the same time I want to make sure, my cost is less than what I earn from multiple domains hosting packages.

Can anybody help me with this?

Just don't offer UNLIMITED data and bandwidth with UNLIMITED domain addons. That won't work out to well for you.

We've been doing fine on our packages since we've had them, unlimited features (in terms of domains, databases, ftp accounts etc.) but with a sensible limit upon the transfer / diskspace.

Just got to make sure not to go mental on the amount of transfer or diskspace, as that's where the abuse will happen.

What are the other companies' AUPs and SLAs for multiple domain hosting and what is the level of support they provide. For example, I am planning to provide only 10 support incidents per customer per month and if a customer needs more than 10 instances, then it will be extra paid. Does that make sense?

you can put limitations like inode which hostgator does.

What are the other companies' AUPs and SLAs for multiple domain hosting and what is the level of support they provide. For example, I am planning to provide only 10 support incidents per customer per month and if a customer needs more than 10 instances, then it will be extra paid. Does that make sense?

This never works..you cannot track the support incidents most often and more over customers hate when they are charged for support.

Analyse your business environment and come to a conclusion if the Unlimited Plan is very much necessary.

I am not talking about unlimited packages since I don't have the infrastructure required for it. To build the infrastructure will be far too expensive and it will never be easy to recover the cost incurred. For support, I need to know more opinions so that I can plan on implementing the best solution.

Can somebody tell me how does Hostgator manage to provide unlimited domain hosting packages on Cpanel/WHM?

Can somebody tell me how does Hostgator manage to provide unlimited domain hosting packages on Cpanel/WHM?

As Addon Domains on Cpanel

What impact can Add on domains have on the system resources? I believe that the system's limited resources will always be an hindrance to the performance of the cpanel if there are unlimited domains hosted. Is there any way to cluster Cpanel Servers?

Is there any way to cluster Cpanel Servers? In theory, yes. In practice, few hosts do that, and Hostgator isn't one of them.

I believe that the system's limited resources will always be an hindrance to the performance of the cpanel if there are unlimited domains hosted. True. You may find that say 10000 domains will result in them contacting you to discuss the situation or simply suspending the account. But customers on average will not have anywhere near that number of domains, not even parked ones.

I have been doing this business for more than 2 years. I experienced following packages are very cheap and reliable. Reliable is the key which customers expect.

you can try this tinyurl(.)com/4mlvr8

I see you are also providing Unlimited Disk space. Do you have SAN or GFS storage? How do you manage unlimited disk space? What control panel are you using? And what is 100% Wind Powered?