Reseller providers for web design companies.

Therefore · March 31st, 2008, 03:46 AM

I have learned a lot of that. Friend of mine is web designer. He asked me to help him to solve the problem with his customer's hosting. I thought he need VPS server, but soon I understand that rerseller account might be an option (due to the support related issues).
In this case I would like to ask your opinion about companies:
Hostgator.com, Lypha.com and Utropicmedia.net.
Which one among them can you recommend for web design company?

allsquare · March 31st, 2008, 10:41 AM

What's special about hostting a site for a designer?

welshstew · March 31st, 2008, 10:51 AM

site5 are very good or you can use our sponsor wesh, who i have heard is excellent

WESH-UK · March 31st, 2008, 07:34 PM

Heres a though from a customers perspective....

Your designer does the hosting for you, so you now introduce 1 single point of failiure to your business. 1 man, 1 credit card who you rely on to keep your business online, trading as a web designer with no history or business references.

You wouldnt by hosting yourself from an un-known 1 man band, so trying to sell it to your customers gives them the same perspective.

Now, if on the other hand you encourage your customers to become the customer of a bigger company, well established with a good customer service history, this not only inspires confidence in them that their website will be looked after, but will also show your customer that you care enough to find them a good provider, who can support both their needs and yours while you concentrate on their website.

Its like when customers often ask us which broadband provider to choose, and why dont we supply broadband ourselves...

Its simple, stick to what your good at, and concentrate on "whats best for the customer"

If you stay focused on whats best for the customer at ALL times, you cant go wrong.

Even make a sales pitch out of it telling customers that you would prefer them to host their website with x company due to the excellent support and great service blah blah blah which will leave you free to concentrate on their needs much better, and that if they want, you can arrange and pay for the hosting at x company for them an just bill them for it later...

Thus, you build trust, confidence, and inspire the customer to proceed with you by demonstrating knowledge and good practices.

If you dont beleive me, ask your customer where they would rather by a house from, a stranger, or an established estate agent? Well, there business home is no different to their own house because if their business home goes wrong, they have no income.

Plus, as a reseller, you then have all the extra expense of billing your customers (This is very time consuming for new resellers if you dont spend out on a decent billing system) and you have the job of training your customers in using their control panels, general usage and other things, when you could be concentrating on helping them to succeed.

Aso · April 1st, 2008, 08:17 AM

Totally agree with Wesh.

Unless you are (seriously) adept in hosting, billing and customer support, you're going to end up with more problems than it's worth (especially the more customers you take on).

If you sell the service, you will be held responsible, even if 'your' servers are 5000 miles away.

As Wesh said, if clients inquire about hosting, I point them in the right direction or offer to set it up on their behalf. Afterwards, I bill them and let them know who to call when they need hosting help.

tankara · April 1st, 2008, 10:27 AM

And provide them with all necessary info.

Tyrik Trent · April 2nd, 2008, 02:32 AM

Support is a very important part of a hosting package at any level: shared, reseller, VPS, dedicated and so on. However, if for a small website on a shared account support rarely has to be lightning fast, for a reseller that has perhaps tens of clients in his own care, support must be available at all times and be very fast. 27/4 support is of utmost importance.

moromara · April 4th, 2008, 10:00 AM

I really like Utropicmedia.com with Perl, TomCats adn Rubyonrails offered in reseller plans. They offers 3 or more datacenter location, I think it might be useful.

quicker · April 8th, 2008, 05:45 AM

To the OP, among the web hosting companies you nave mentioned above, UtropicMedia.net reseller plans seem the most web desine related. It includes much Software, Scripting and Programming Features and Control Panel Features that are important for a web desiner.
That's my point of view.

Tyrik Trent · April 8th, 2008, 09:09 AM

I've had a resellers account with Drupalvaluehosting.com for about 5 months, uptime has been awesome, speeds and reliability have been top notch. One thing I haven't really tried out is their support.

lolita · April 15th, 2008, 08:16 AM

If you are serious about your business, get a VPS account, install billing software and support your clients yourself, at least you'll have no one to blame, agree this is a tougher task than just employ your host's in-house support.
Have nothing against the company you mentioned, but take some time and check VPS deals available now, I mean companies like asmallorange.com, hostV.com and jaguarpc.com.