How long did you stay on a reseller plan?

H

hosterooni

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For those of you who host clients, how long did you actually stay on a reseller plan? Are there any hosts that actually continue with a reseller plan after having a massive amount of clients?
 
We were never on a reseller account. We started on a cable modem in 2000 (I know, that wasn't the best plan, but we've been off of it for a while).

But yes, some large hosts do use resellers. The reasoning I see is usually so as not to harm its own reputation by hosting "shady" sites.

-- HW
 
The cable modem must of done justice for you, at least on an acquisition basis. It sounds like you were able to develop a customer base which lead you to building your hosting company.
 
I stayed on the hosting plan for about six months than figured out what dedicated servers were :) then i was all up/down hill from there.
 
Our company had a reseller account, then two, then three over the course of the first year. The company we were with did a poor job and we had to move the customers out quickly. That is a total pain in the ass, I don't recommend it.
 
We jumped right in to things in 2001 with 2 servers co-located in NYC, but whenever you feel like the time is right, you may consider jumping up from your reseller account. A dedicated server offers extra flexibility that you don't get with a reseller account, as long as you're capable of adminstrating the server, or outsourcing that task to a system administration service.
 
Here is something to consider. I have been asked to make the jump before, however, believe I am better being hosted elsewhere and being a reseller.

Though I hold down a full-time job, I do the hosting gig 24 hrs a day. I have one other person who provides 1st line support via Client Exec and e-mail. I have a minimal number of customers.

I am however, attempting to get bigger. Due to my full-time job I have fallen behind on the times as far a design, but utilize freelancers when something good comes along.

Since I do not want to manage my own server, is it ever a good idea for me to go to Dedicated? I have had some say that it is dedicated, but they will maintain it, just that only my clients would reside on it... what do you make of that?

Anyway, my thought is this... I resell, make a little bit of money, but really enjoy being involved in web hosting, so, is it really neccessary to ever move to dedicated hosting?
 
ZiDev said:
We were never on a reseller account. We started on a cable modem in 2000 (I know, that wasn't the best plan, but we've been off of it for a while).

But yes, some large hosts do use resellers. The reasoning I see is usually so as not to harm its own reputation by hosting "shady" sites.

-- HW
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lol, you too

i did the same thing on late 2000
 
In 97 we started off on our schools edu line we had a server running redhat I think 6.0 or 6.2 at the time. Most of the clients we had where school kids or freinds no real profit was being made. The following year we moved to a apt and got cable modem access boy wa that expensive being that cable modems where pretty new then. We hosted about 20 people on there a about 10.00 a pop, they where all small sites mostly text. After doign that for a month and having constant issues with the cable company we bout a reseller account, back then they where almost as expensive as low end dedicated servers are today. We stayed with them for about a year or two and once we had enough clients that would cover the dedicated bill we moved over to a dedicated server. We now been on dedicated servers for about 7 years and our client base keeps growing.
 
Never really had a reseller account. We basically started in '00 under a VPS plan from Verio (pricey, I know but excellent uptime & support) with a few customers which we designed their sites. From there, we went straight to a dedicate server.

We've thought about going colo, but I don't see the advantages at this stage. I'm happy with a few ded's at the moment.
 
What type of things do you need to look for in a colo so that you can have them replace hardware for you in case of failures?
 
I guess I'll have to take a look at it again but I don't see where I'll be saving the money. The simple fact of the hardware inventory, including replacement parts and having a tech on site alone would probably kill me.
 
Yes there are some resellers who stay with reseller accounts even after they grow. I have a couple reseller clients with a large number of customer. I don't know what they are charging, but they have enough customers.
 
Reseller accounts are ok IF the reseller is looked after - for us they are our lifeblood and so we look after them.

Although it maybe cheaper if you have alot of customers to get a dedicated you then have server management issues to deal with.

A test for a good hosting company is when the resellers stay with them and progress to managed dedicated servers rather than move away ;)
 
We still have a reseller plan (5th month), as we cannot really afford a dedicated server at the moment but, as soon as we can, we'll be straight to dedicated.
 
A test for a good hosting company is when the resellers stay with them and progress to managed dedicated servers rather than move away
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Yes, I would recommend any serious web hosting startup to have something like this documented in their business plan or other corporate documents. Basically, make sure you lay out your plans and profit per, etc, then after X number of plans you plan to move to dedicated, etc.

Oh wait, many startups don't have a business plan :)
 
AlEast said:
What type of things do you need to look for in a colo so that you can have them replace hardware for you in case of failures?
Click to expand...
When involving yourself with co-location, you are better off dealing with a local datacenter when it comes to hardware. In my case the datacenter is an hour away from me and the only issues we have had with hardware so far has been my first server build in which I used a prescott which runs as hot as an inferno rather than a nice polar northwood!

Other than that make sure you purchase a reboot switch for your servers and your ready to go! I would never go back to depending on a company like ev1 for servers. Especially when I was paying $150 a month there for the same server that only costs $76 a month now. That basically has cut my ongoing costs in half and I have double the bandwidth!
 
Hi people, I have a reseller with www.turnkeyresellers.com since 1 year + and their service is great !. The techs there always help me and I can say they are very nice people, sometimes I'm very heavy ( I know it ) coz I'm not too much smart for all Internet stuff, they have an amazing patience with me.

The server where I'm hosted is fantastic , well obviously nothing it's perfect , it had a couple of downtimes since I'm there but the guys of TKR always take care of their machines.

I've heard in some forums that TKR has problem , I'm totally disagree, if you host bad stuff it's normal you have problems.. no no no bad people always have problems coz they are bad. It's easy say the provider is a ********* ... but that's not the truth :)

Love ya,

Noa
 
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