For those successfully running a business utilising shared reseller hosting, be it small shared plans or hosting their design clients. How do you make sure your main site (point of contact) is accessible if ever the server goes down taking down your clients sites? Having all the "eggs in one basket" means your clients would have no way to reach you when your company site is offline too.

I was thinking of hosting my whmcs installation on a different domain and network, at least if my main site and clients are down because of problems with the shared server they can still reach me through the off network whmcs installation.

Would that be a good solution and any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

The only way to do that is to host your main site on a separate server so that if their sites go down they can still contact you and if your site goes down, they don't have to worry about theirs going down.

Yeah, I see that. I`m just trying to get my head around the dns side of things. If I used private nameservers which use the same domain as the main site, how would I set up the dns/nameservers so there are no problems with both the main site on one network and the reseller account on a different network?

DNS is not my best topic!

Where ever the main site is hosted, just set up a-records for each ns and point them to the other server. If you get a VPS for both you could set up dns clustering and keep the same nameservers on both servers.

But then if the main site server goes down that would effect the offsite reseller account?

Thanks.

yeah, in a DNS cluster situation it would have some effect but if you just use different nameservers on each and use a-records to point to the secondary server and if the primary server doesn't go down for too long, there shouldn't be any effect at all.

You can run the main site on a separate vps not on your network. We also have found that having a special twitter account and a forum on a different host also allows for contact when crap happens.

Otherwise, considering you are using a reseller already for the lower cost than a VPS, you can just get a shared hosting package from any decent host for a few dollars to set up your main website. That way your main website will still be up even if your reseller crashes.

Even if you are using the best services, in some cases power outages might occur which could be out of control, even if you have been using dedicated servers for some years but as you can guess, choosing from among the rather costly solutions could be better than sticking to the very affordable accounts sold by some companies.

Otherwise, considering you are using a reseller already for the lower cost than a VPS, you can just get a shared hosting package from any decent host for a few dollars to set up your main website. That way your main website will still be up even if your reseller crashes.

Yeah i can see a few host doing that. From my point of view, companies who don't host on their own servers means they don't trust their own servers and there is a high probability that there will be lots of downtime.

My main sites are hosted on the same servers as my clients. My whmcs/support site is hosted off network using a different domain and dns, so that in the event that my clients servers are down I can still be reached, and I can still contact my clients.

hostorca.com and hostorca.co.uk are on the same servers as my clients.
hostorca.net is on a different server, in a different datacenter.

I've always wondered about this-- suppose you have your sales/support installation on a separate server and it goes down?

Your client sites are ok, but your sales and support is offline. The odds of that happening is just as great as the original scenario.

I, so far, have both client sites and sales/support on the same servers. For me, I feel that I should be in the same boat as my clients as far as uptime and problem-solving.

Of course, I am a small bit-player in this industry and don't have hundreds of servers and thousands and thousands of clients. I give my clients direct telephone support just in case.

I know I've been "lucky" concerning downtimes on the servers... but part of this luck is a lot of hard work.

For us, our support and main site are on a server with our users' accounts. However, we have our forum on a different server with a different host, just in case. Also, we have set up a twitter account just for network issues and ask that our clients subscribe.

This way we can mass relay info via the twitter account if/when we have an issue. We can then follow up on the forum site.

I like the twitter idea. It`s easy for clients to remember, if you use a good username. I find the problem with using a different domain name for the support desk or forum is that if the client loses their welcome email they often forget the "other" domain url.

Mmmm, Twitter I`m headed over there right now. Thanks for the idea Scott.

Many people host their company websites on different servers than their clients websites so in the event of an outage, their websites are still up. However, keep in mind, if you can't trust your own servers, why should someone else?

Many people host their company websites on different servers than their clients websites so in the event of an outage, their websites are still up. However, keep in mind, if you can't trust your own servers, why should someone else?

Not a case of trusting my own servers, but sh1t happens, power outages, hardware failure, anything and clients still need to reach me.

You're welcome magicvorlon.

You said, "Not a case of trusting my own servers, but sh1t happens, power outages, hardware failure, anything and clients still need to reach me."

OR

When your main server goes down, you can contact your clients first. Send them all an email giving your Twitter address to look for timely updates.

I have a gmail account just for that purpose-- fortunately I haven't had to use it for that purpose.... yet.

I don't lose any sleep whatsoever worrying about how my clients would contact me if a server goes down.... What are they going to say, "OMG, my site is down!" (Like I don't know already.)

More important is that I would communicate to them when it will be back up!

If my main selling site was on a different server(s) I could conceivably be broadcasting to my clients that I have put their site on a server that I don't trust to be reliable.

All in all, I really believe that the odds of any server going down is pretty much the same regardless of the network, provider, carrier, etc.