Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Reseller Hosting : hostiva's reseller plan???

[ben]

hallo,
have anybody had an experience with hostiva's reseller plan? good or worst?
how about their support?

thanks!

[cactus]

I sign-up for their reseller account a few days ago and so far they have been very prompt in answering most of my questions.

But I had some problems with the customized nameservers for resellers and I hope they can solve it. They have been very helpful and provide another ip for my nameservers and hopefully it will work and resolved to their server.

[cactus]

Hi everyone,

just to let you know who are resellers for them, if you have a problem getting your customized nameservers to resolve to their server, just informed them and ask for help.

Initially, I couldn't change/update the customized nameservers and they did it for me by logging in to my domain registrar to test it and it's now working fine.

[ben]

hi,
Could you let me know how to customize it? I mean, what they said to you about it?
And, based on your experience so far, how about if your costumers want to upgrade/downgrade their package?

Thanks cactus!

[cactus]

Hi ben,

Sorry , I was busy and could not visit WHT earlier, anyway if you are new to reselling. Please visit their site and read the FAQ and they require that you sign-up at least a VH100 account to qualify for a reseller account.

As a reseller, you may not want to disclose to your clients who is your server host and what you paid for the accounts to be resold to clients which is usually kept strictly confidential so that's why you need customized nameservers for example:

ns1.yourdomain.com
ns2.yourdomain.com

In my case, I sign-up for a VH100 plan and after 2 days, I applied for a reseller account and they send me an email furnishing the details on how to login to your reseller control panel and add/delete/upgrade accounts for clients.

It's just a routine thing for me as I have done reselling for quite a number of Hosts which is an ongoing thing for me so it's not a problem to me but as a newbie to reselling, it's really a confusing and rather frustating business if you are not familiar or do not have the experience to answer questions or advice your clients if they have a problem and you have to refer to your upstream provider(Host) for every little problems faced by your clients before you reply to them, then it will not be viable to be a reseller until you are confident enough to handle at least 80% of the complaints by your clients and the other 20% you can refer to your Host provider which usually involves the server configurations/settings which you have no control and have to depend on them to fixed it for you.

I normally don't like to disclosed such things in a public forum but it's special for you and for the benefit of WHT members who may be interested in becoming a reseller and I feel I should warn what's ahead that a reseller will face and be prepared for it.

Hope this helps.

[ben]

Hi cactus,
Thanks for your advice ,
I wish you're a real reseller of Hostiva, not their staff So, I could get objective opinions about them..

I still have some questions to become a reseller of them. Wish you or someone else could give me the answers..
Based on your experience with them,

• how to costomized our name servers?
• when you signed up for a VH100 plan, you use their nameservers (I think, they are ns1.hostiva.com, etc). After you became a reseller and got your own nameservers, could you change their nameservers for package you signed up at first time with your own nameservers w/o any fee?
• how about if your costumers want to upgrade/downgrade their package? Is it complicated or not?

At last, may I know your url that offer their hosting packages?

[cactus]

Hi ben,

Glad to help out. Below are some answers I hope will clear some doubts that you may have.

Q. I wish you're a real reseller of Hostiva, not their staff

A. No, I have no connections with them, except being their reseller.

Q. how to costomized our name servers?

A. When you first up sign-up for a VH100 account, you need to use.
[ns1.hostiva.com & ns2.hostiva.com] and when you become a reseller they provide [ns1.yourdomain.com & ns2.hostnoc.com] please note that hostnoc.com is anonymous but if you want to have both ns1,ns2 having the same name, you have to email them and ask them to configure the setting on their server to accept it. Yes, you can change/update to your own nameservers your first account that you used to sign-up with them and they would normally use that domain name as your nameservers.

Q. how about if your costumers want to upgrade/downgrade their package? Is it complicated or not?

A. No problem, Your reseller control panel has options to upgrade/downgrade the clients' account and many other features. It's very easy.

Q. At last, may I know your url that offer their hosting packages?

A. This is a difficult question to answer, of course every business has its plans/goals and ways how to do business. Anyway, I am in the web designing business and target customers in my local area by word of mouth, local newspapers, recommendations.

For web hosting packages, I combined 4 resellers plans/packages and create new plans/packages and incorporated them into my offers to clients and let the clients choose whichever that is more to their requirements and needs. This way, I have the best of both worlds. This is also using the above methods(web designing) which works effectively for me in terms of service, contact and support to clients and billing is minimize. Sorry I can't post the url as it would not be appropriate and solely for business reasons.

I hope the above answers your questions and if you should need more info, please contact them and I am sure they will be more than pleased to help you.

Regards,
cactus

[ben]

Thanks (again) cactus!
Good answer!!!

But when I tried to sign up, I found this sentence in their payment gateway page:

This is a recurring transaction. Your account will be charged every

Do you know what it's mean? It's look like an "automatic payment" that will credit my CC every year without need my permission ... Is it correct? CMIIW..

[cactus]

Hi ben,

Yes, it's correct. Your account will be billed annually.

[ben]

wouw.. it's not fair I think!
Is it mean I can't run from them if I felt their services are bad?
cactus, do you know how to stop them billed my account every year after I signed up?

[cactus]

Hi ben,

This is what I would recommend if you are not happy or encounter any unresolved dispute with them.

1. Send an email to them to terminate the contract and keep a copy of it as you are going to need it later as prove to support your claims later.

2. Inform your cc company/bank to block payments to them.

3. If you are being billed due to some reasons, ask for a chargeback through your cc company/bank with supporting documents(email copy) attach to dispute form that your cc will need.

4. Ask you cc to issue you a new card and cancell the old one.

I hope you don't have to take such drastic actions.

Regards,
Cactus

[NyteOwl]

Recurring charges are not unusual.

From their TOS:

"Unless the account holder notify Hostiva vie email to cancel the account - at least 5 days prior to the end of a billing cycle, the contract will be automatically renewed on every billing cycle."

If you are unhappy or don't want to renew, just notify them at least 5 days before the end of the billing period and you won't be billed for the next period. This is pretty common for a lot of businesses with recurring accounts.


Note: I ma not connected with Hostiva in any manner whatsoever.

[mithilesh]

Till now I haven't idea about it when I will get it then I will better reply you.

[ben]

I tried contact them by e-mail. here is their answer about that:

If you cancel your account it will no longer try to bill you - this feature is for enabled accounts only.

I hope they're not cheat about it!...

How do you think about that?

[PERL SCRIPTOR]

I just signed for their VH 500 account and plan on putting three domains on it. Hopefully, all will go well.

I'm currently going to be using www.easymonitor.com to monitor their uptime but can anyone else recommend a better free one? Thanks,