Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Reseller Hosting : Looking for Turnkey Reseller Hosting

[badkneecap]

I've been in the CMS business for 8+ years. Looking to get into hosting business as well. I'm looking for a turnkey system where we could start reselling hosting options and just configure with our info and bank, prices, design, etc. I don't want to deal with all the coding involved. I need scalability as well. Expecting to move current clients over and start taking on new ones.

[01globalnet]

If you are serious about your clients and want the highest of reliability, uptime and support you should check H-Sphere providers like Cartika, Jodohost and Eirca.

H-Sphere can automate everything and supports Linux/Unix, Windows, Coldfusion, Exchange !

If you choose the popular Cpanel (or other control panel like Directadmin, Plesk), then you should get a billing software like WHMCS, ClientExec etc. to automate the hosting business.

Some reputable and reliable Cpanel providers : HostGator (free Autopilot), InnoHosting (free CE / WHMC), ResellerZoom (Failover hosting, free CE), AxisHost etc.

Reputable Plesk provider (clustered) : EuroVPS / CanadaVPS

There are also other companies offering Turnkey solutions like ResellerPanel, Concentric, Hostopia, BulixHost, ResellerClub, Mosso etc. etc. - some of them are budget hosts and the other more high end.

Well, if I were you I would choose H-Sphere...

[iHubNet]

If you are looking for total turnkey solutions including sales, end-user sales.. check wildwestdomain, or resellerpanel..

if you are looking for turnkey, but more revenue and control.. best way will be purchase reseller plans from the providers. Right now, most of them will provide free billing software and domain reseller account..

thanks

[Mike Hobgood]

Also keep a look out for "Companies for sale" Many new hosts who back down often sell their companies with Domain, Design, Even hosting sometimes!

[Asher S]

Originally Posted by badkneecap

I've been in the CMS business for 8+ years. Looking to get into hosting business as well. I'm looking for a turnkey system where we could start reselling hosting options and just configure with our info and bank, prices, design, etc. I don't want to deal with all the coding involved. I need scalability as well. Expecting to move current clients over and start taking on new ones.

Helm is an option as well it also has a lot of what you're looking for and is imho easier to use than H-Sphere.

[cartika-andrew]

Originally Posted by ReyoxHosting

Helm is an option as well it also has a lot of what you're looking for and is imho easier to use than H-Sphere.

Well, that is certainly a matter of opinion. Having said this, helm is windows only - and with less complexity and capabilities, you would somewhat expect less complexity.

I need scalability as well.

you really do need to look at clustered solutions for true scalability - as you grow, you can spread your accounts across hundreds of servers ultimately - or you could even go the route of building your own cluster and even going with a high availability model. However, you really do need to make the correct platform choice - as migrations are difficult and expensive - and scaling with a solution that is not built to scale also becomes cumbersome and expensive.

[Asher S]

Originally Posted by CartikaHosting

Well, that is certainly a matter of opinion. Having said this, helm is windows only - and with less complexity and capabilities, you would somewhat expect less complexity.



you really do need to look at clustered solutions for true scalability - as you grow, you can spread your accounts across hundreds of servers ultimately - or you could even go the route of building your own cluster and even going with a high availability model. However, you really do need to make the correct platform choice - as migrations are difficult and expensive - and scaling with a solution that is not built to scale also becomes cumbersome and expensive.

Helm has lesser features than H-Sphere? I beg to differ since I use both and prefer Helm. Sure it doesn't integrate with Linux but its the most comprehensive Windows CP that the industry has seen in the last 6 years. Helm 3 was great & Helm 4 is simply splendid.

Just like H-Sphere, Helm is completely scalable and versatile. But like you said, either is a matter of opinion, in my case I'm basing it on experience (on-hand).

[cartika-andrew]

Helm has lesser features than H-Sphere? I beg to differ since I use both and prefer Helm. Sure it doesn't integrate with Linux but its the most comprehensive Windows CP that the industry has seen in the last 6 years. Helm 3 was great & Helm 4 is simply splendid.

I am a huge fan of helm and have a fair amount of experience with it. If you search these forums, you will see I often recommend it. Having said this, its feature set is NOWHERE near that of hsphere - does helm have linux support, BSD support, exchange support, sharepoint support, high availability support, dedicated server provisioning? how about all of the advanced administrator types of functions in windows like allowing clients to create their own app pools, designate application directories, server to server ftp, zip and unzip, ownership capabilities, etc...

lets not turn this into a control panel discussion more then we already have - and again - I am simply a HUGE fan of helm - but, ease of use is relative - and with such a dramatic difference in feature sets and capabilities, you would also expect an associated change in relative complexity...

[Galaxy-Hosts]

I would suggest going with a cpanel/WHM reseller that offer whmcs as an addon. Cpanel is far more popular than Helm/Hsphere, and you will find that there are many more clients that want cPanel than there are clients requesting either Hsphere or Helm.

[cartika-andrew]

Originally Posted by Galaxy-Hosts

I would suggest going with a cpanel/WHM reseller that offer whmcs as an addon. Cpanel is far more popular than Helm/Hsphere, and you will find that there are many more clients that want cPanel than there are clients requesting either Hsphere or Helm.

First off, my apologies to the original poster for the rant to follow....

Galaxy-Hosts - there is simply so much wrong with these statements - I do not mean to pick on you - as a few on this board will often come up with comments similar to yours above - and people here really need to get over it....

- who are these clients that prefer cpanel? first off, although there will be some cross over - people using helm or hsphere typically would not or could not use cpanel - as last I checked, cpanel does not support Microsoft development platforms - so, its safe to assume all Microsoft developers would not use or request cpanel correct - well, theres 1 big chunk of the market spoken for

- Almost any SaaS provider or Application Service provider would never utilize something like cpanel - its not at all scalable and cant cluster or load balance without significant custom work and overhead maintenance that these companies cant be bothered with - so, theres another large chunk of the market (as witnessed by the emergence and proliferation of such technologies from 3Terra, SWSoft, PSoft, etc)

- cpanels stronghold used to be in the low end hosting market - but, since the explosion of the price war and the emergence of the massive overselling model, companies are not able to compete using single server platforms and are moving to clustered solutions to try and dissipate loads and take advantage of large scale resource allocations over 100's of nodes to turn the averages in their favour - ie dreamhost, mosso, mediatemple, servage, etc, etc, etc - so, theres another big chunk of the market

- lastly - maybe 1% (and I mean maybe 1%) of the end user consumer market actually cares about what control panel they are using - Joes Manufacturing only cares that they can add email accounts, add domains and manage their scripts - after that, it is up to the provider to determine which environment and which platforms give them the greatest flexibility, allows them to scale, provides automation, etc - and there is no disputing that clustered, scalable, redundant, multi-platform, flexible solutions are the way of the future - cpanel is dead in the water - and most already know this...

[badkneecap]

I appreciate all the feedback. The one thing I didn't explain was that we are currently using Plesk to set up our sites because it's Windows based. We have a CMS system that was written entirely using ASP and MS-SQL. That is the bulk of our business, the CMS, not the hosting. BUT, I'm looking into the option of starting hosting so I can possibly upsell the CMS option. Whatever solution I go with, I'm going to need to be able to at least host my current clients in a windows environment. But everywhere I look, people seem to be using cPanel. That's where I think I need a solution that can do both.

And the other part of the equation is that I would like the "turn-key" solution of being able to just put up a site with all the hosting options and plug in our merchant account and start selling with the traffic we currently get. That's the master plan.

[cartika-andrew]

Originally Posted by badkneecap

I appreciate all the feedback. The one thing I didn't explain was that we are currently using Plesk to set up our sites because it's Windows based. We have a CMS system that was written entirely using ASP and MS-SQL. That is the bulk of our business, the CMS, not the hosting. BUT, I'm looking into the option of starting hosting so I can possibly upsell the CMS option. Whatever solution I go with, I'm going to need to be able to at least host my current clients in a windows environment. But everywhere I look, people seem to be using cPanel. That's where I think I need a solution that can do both.

And the other part of the equation is that I would like the "turn-key" solution of being able to just put up a site with all the hosting options and plug in our merchant account and start selling with the traffic we currently get. That's the master plan.

Hi badkneecap - I assure you that you are not alone with those requirements.

Plesk and H-Sphere can accomodate your requirements. Helm is also an outstanding solution, but, only accomodates Windows - so, if you need both, you will be limited to h-sphere and plesk as far as out of the box solutions go.

Both will allow you to scale across platforms and across servers and both will provide a provisioning platform for you where you can utilize your existing merchant account to sell hosting packages.

Not sure which CMS you use, but, you could probably load it into an auto-installer and have an automated provisioning platform as well (easyapps on hsphere would support this and I am fairly certain you could do this on plesk and helm as well)