New to forums few questions with a hello

[eerkcom]

Hello Readers,

Found your site last night around 1am and I am very please to find a forum to learn and discuss hosting. I started my hosting company for something to do while I'm not painting houses during the warmer months. I purchased a resellers account from fatnetwork.net and then began selling hosting on ebay.

The resellers plan is considered unlimited storage unlimited bandwidth. I knew from the get go that there is no such thing as "unlimited" however I got the impression this company meant we can handle alot!

After reading these forums I am now worried on how much I'm allowed before they say enough is enough. I currently host about 42 sites with their same motto "unlimited". I highly regret this as I'm not a shady or dishonest person. I have since changed to 4800MB of space and 120G of bandwidth.

I'm still getting my feet wet as I'm learning as I go. My real question now is I'm ready to make my hosting company slightly bigger. Should I continue doing business with someone who offers "unlimited" everything or do I move to my own servers?

I have about $2000 to invest into my small online company and I do not want to make anymore foolish moves.

It's a shame I learned how to do hosting from ebay. Everyone is selling these unlimited accounts and the customers never question us/them. I also do not understand this whole "resellers" package. Most sell for about $20 a month and offer unlimited domain names. How is that company making money if I resell 200 domains of their space? That is my main goal to gain about 200 accounts. I feel that 200 would be my max I could handle with myself and my wife running the show.

Sorry for such a bouncing around post as I have so much running through my head. The forums have opened up a whole new world to me. Hopefully I can learn a few things and make a few friends along the way.

Justin

 

[Blue]

Welcome to HD eerkcom.

You are right to be suspicious of unlimited offers. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't exist.
I don't see any "unlimited" reseller plans on fatnetwork.net. Was this a special offer or an ebay auction?

There are a few issues here. First of all, if you plan to expand your client base you will need to have support staff, at least while you are working your regular job.
At the very least you will need to have a very good managed hosting plan.

I would recommend, depending on the resources that your clients are currently using, that you start out with a VPS or managed dedicated server when you move from your current situation. A VPS is something you can get into without a large initial payout and you can use the rest of your funds for advertising and promotion.
When you outgrow your VPS you can move up to a dedicated server.

To answer your other question about how hosts who sell reseller accounts make money the sad answer is many of them oversell their services badly and end up going under when they cannot support what they sell.

 

[Marks]

Firstly,
Welcome to HD Justin,

Ok well; There is no such thing as unlimited. Unmetered is a different story. However if this company is legit I'm guessing he/she is adding more hdd's to his/her server and buying more bandwidth which can be done. Just look at Source-Forge

As for everything else Blue has hit the nail on the head with the rest. Once again welcome to Hosting Discussion!

 

[gwh23]

hey, welcome to the forum, I am relatively new here too. I think you are right when not buying from an "unlimited" host. Its not really a good idea to support those marketing practices especially if you are a business. I wouldn't associate myself with those types of businesses.

I would expect a host to oversell, but you better with a host that points out some limits on your hosting.

A VPS , dedicated, semi dedicated may be the way to go....

 

[cyanide]

Hi Justin,

vps and dedicated servers seem to be all the rage nowadays.
however, it also means a much larger amount of knowledge you will need
- with root access, firewalls, security, email spam, linux commands, control panel knowledge.

Dedicated server providers generally do not provide this, unless you shell out for some kind of managed solution or hire a Systems Admin.

If you are concerned with growth, I would suggest you pickup a secondary reseller account with another provider.