DC_Sara — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:05:28 +0000

You can go to WHT and look for hosts that offer reselling.

timjpriebe — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:04:19 +0000

I've also heard good things about Pair.com's reseller program. I've not used it myself, though.

mairving — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:51:59 +0000

ChrisL wrote: Thanks for all the advice wasnt sure where to start. Iv done about 20 sites and just purchased hosting individually each time and taken it off my fee for the site.

If reselling hosting through an established webhost business is the way forward for me can anyone suggest one which offers economy of prices and good support. Maybe you are not allowed advertising in the forums. If not feel free to pm me the details.

Thanks again.

Nearly every host has a reseller plan. I usually use Hostmatters unless I need a dedicated server. You can also check with JLHost who also posted in this thread.

ChrisL — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:36:10 +0000

gregsbaby64 wrote: Hi and welcome!

We resold hosting through an established webhost business. That was great, we set up the accounts and banked the profits. They did all the upkeep and upgrading as well as helped us along the way.

Thanks for all the advice wasnt sure where to start. Iv done about 20 sites and just purchased hosting individually each time and taken it off my fee for the site.

If reselling hosting through an established webhost business is the way forward for me can anyone suggest one which offers economy of prices and good support. Maybe you are not allowed advertising in the forums. If not feel free to pm me the details.

Thanks again.

Renegade — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:53:36 +0000

Hi ChrisL, welcome to the forums, why don't you stop by the introductions forum and introduce yourself?

I will agree with what everyone has said so far. The way I see it, hosting is a very competitive business and anyone can setup a server in their basement. But having said that, just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should.

IMHO, you'd be far better off getting a reseller account.

mairving — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 03:27:01 +0000

JLHost wrote: If you are going to be selling hosting - The last thing you want to do is run the business off a "server" from your own home. Think again.

Amen to that.

The reasons are quite simple.
Power - unless your system is hooked up to a backup generator, your power cuts off, all your sites are down.
Connection - a T1 line would really be the minimum connection. Pretty costly solution at about $400-600 month. Couldn't even consider one of the cheaper solutions like business class cable.
Hardware inventory - you need to stock a router and a spare, some hard drives, RAM, etc.

So say you invested all the money in the above, well you still wouldn't have near the pipes and the redundancy built into it as you would using a host.

Hosting progression is like this: host a site or 2, get a few more become a reseller, get a bunch get a dedicater or colo server. Those give you the advantage of always on power, big pipes to the Internet, usually a good supply of parts and also some expertise. If you get enough sites then you might want to setup your own NOC but that would be a long way down the road and still is hard to be cost efficient.

With hosting you have to have a lot of customers to make any kind of money. To me a better business model is to have only a few customers but charge them a maintenance fee which includes hosting, site maintenance, backup, etc. I once charged a guy $150 a month for hosting, maintenance and his hosting plan cost me $6. He was a pain in the butt and wasn't worth that even.

DC_Sara — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 22:27:52 +0000

Hi and welcome!

We resold hosting through an established webhost business. That was great, we set up the accounts and banked the profits. They did all the upkeep and upgrading as well as helped us along the way.

James — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 10:39:13 +0000

If you are going to be selling hosting - The last thing you want to do is run the business off a "server" from your own home. Think again.