Choosing the best reseller hosting

Choosing a web host is one of the most important decisions you will make for your business if you own a website. That is especially true if you are a reseller web host. The services you can provide are directly related to the services provided by your web host. In effect, you’ll be the middleman, so you’d better have someone on your side who can help you stay in business.

So, as a reseller web host, what should you look for in a web host? In many cases, you should be looking for some of the same things that your clients will. However, you will discover that you have less flexibility than they do because you rely heavily on your web host.

Assume you host a smattering of hobbyist websites, a few non-profit informational sites, a smattering of artist/artisan sites that sell their wares online, and possibly even some sites for local garage bands. They may or may not be bothered if visitors to their websites experience slow loading times on occasion, or if they are unable to access the site for a brief period of time each month. How upset they are will be determined by how seriously they take their website and whether or not they treat it as a business.

That is not an option for you. As a reseller web host, your website and the ability to provide uptime are your primary focus. And, by extension, if your potential customers have difficulty accessing your website, they will conclude that you do not provide good web hosting services. It makes no difference whether it’s your web host’s fault or your own. Do you honestly believe your customers will accept that as an excuse when they call you to complain about their website being down?

Check to see if your host is credible.

I understand that money is tight when starting a new business. You’ll undoubtedly be looking for any opportunity to save money. Believe me when I say that your web host is not the place to go with the lowest bidder.

Oh, problems are unlikely to arise right away. However, after a while, you will experience slowdowns and downtime. At this point, your customers will begin to complain to you about their websites failing to function properly. In turn, you must contact your web host.

If you did not thoroughly research this web host before signing up, you may be in for a few unpleasant surprises. You see, you might not be the only one with a razor-thin profit margin. Your web host may be using IDE drives instead of SCSI drives, or it may be overburdening its servers with too many accounts. (To be fair, reseller web hosts are frequently guilty of not allowing for a sufficient margin as well.)

So, how can you determine whether your prospective web host is dependable before something like this happens? One way to tell is whether they provide a guarantee. Some hosts will guarantee 99 percent uptime and will refund all or part of your monthly fee if they fall short of that. This provides them with a strong incentive to keep things running smoothly.

Another way to determine the dependability of your prospective web host is to visit its support forums. Look around for a while to get a sense of the types of complaints the company receives.

Customers can and will be very blunt about whether or not you should use a particular web host, as evidenced by the thread topics. That’s fine; you want that kind of information. Remember, it could very well be your company that is being flamed… and if you go with the same web hosting company that is being flamed, your company could be raked over the coals a few months from now. If you read about the kinds of issues other people have had with the web host you’re thinking about using, you should be able to avoid them. If they’re bad enough, you’ll realise you should avoid that web host entirely.

Having Fun with Features

Let’s start with the obvious ones: web space and bandwidth. How much of it are you getting, and at what cost? This has an impact on the types of packages you can offer people and the prices you can charge. Remember what I said in the previous section: biggest and cheapest isn’t always best. Consider the types of customers you intend to serve. Are they likely to require a lot of space and a lot of bandwidth? Don’t assume that just because they’re hobbyists means they won’t have some significant needs in this area. The majority of podcasters are hobbyists who are notorious for consuming bandwidth for breakfast.

Examine the additional features offered by your prospective web host. Remember that if your web host does not provide it, you will be unable to provide it to your customers. Most of them will want to be able to have email addresses for their own domain that do not include your domain or the domain of your host. Other features to look for include autoresponders and FTP access. If you’re going to have clients who sell anything on their websites, inquire about servers that support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), MySQL, and shopping carts.

You should also find out what kind of server the host is using (Microsoft, Unix, or an open-source operating system such as Linux). If you or some of your clients want to use server-side scripts, you won’t know what you can support unless you have this information. Remember that one way many businesses differentiate themselves is by how much they can offer their clients in terms of services. If this is the path you want to take with your reseller web hosting business, you’ll need a web host to assist you.

Having Fun with Features

Let’s start with the obvious ones: web space and bandwidth. How much of it are you getting, and at what cost? This has an impact on the types of packages you can offer people and the prices you can charge. Remember what I said in the previous section: biggest and cheapest isn’t always best. Consider the types of customers you intend to serve. Are they likely to require a lot of space and a lot of bandwidth? Don’t assume that just because they’re hobbyists means they won’t have some significant needs in this area. The majority of podcasters are hobbyists who are notorious for consuming bandwidth for breakfast.

Examine the additional features offered by your prospective web host. Remember that if your web host does not provide it, you will be unable to provide it to your customers. Most of them will want to be able to have email addresses for their own domain that do not include your domain or the domain of your host. Other features to look for include autoresponders and FTP access. If you’re going to have clients who sell anything on their websites, inquire about servers that support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), MySQL, and shopping carts.

You should also find out what kind of server the host is using (Microsoft, Unix, or an open-source operating system such as Linux). If you or some of your clients want to use server-side scripts, you won’t know what you can support unless you have this information. Remember that one way many businesses differentiate themselves is by how much they can offer their clients in terms of services. If this is the path you want to take with your reseller web hosting business, you’ll need a web host to assist you.

Customer Service Is Crucial

Remember the scenario I mentioned a few sections ago when I talked about the importance of a web host’s dependability? I’m not aware of any web host that has never experienced downtime, and if there was, it would have made headlines. (In fact, one web host made headlines for being located in downtown New Orleans and remaining operational throughout Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.) If your customers experience downtime for any reason, you must contact your web host. This is when you’ll find out if the company’s customer and technical support is up to par.

Fortunately, you can do some quality testing on your own before signing up with them—in fact, before you even sign up with them. They should have easy access to their email and phone numbers. Make use of this information. Send them a message and see how quickly they respond. If you really want to put them to the test, send a sales-related question to their technical support department and see how quickly they respond. They’ll most likely have to reroute it to sales first, which will give you a chance to see how responsive they are.

However, don’t judge it solely on speed; how well did they answer your question? Call the number as well. Do you reach out to a person or a phone tree? How long are you going to have to wait on hold? Did the person with whom you spoke appear knowledgeable? Did you have to go through several people before you got an answer to your question (which is one of my pet peeves)?

Other methods of contact are available from a number of web hosts. I recently had a pleasant experience while doing some research on web hosts. After a while of poking around on RackSpace’s website, a window popped up offering me the chance to do a live IM chat with one of their representatives. I did, and he asked me a few questions about what I was looking for, as well as answering mine. I appreciated the ability to get quick responses without having to send an email or call.

You will most likely want a web host that provides customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People nowadays expect it. If your customers expect it from you (and they almost certainly will, regardless of what you say), you’d better be able to get it from your web host.

Of course, this is another case where visiting web hosting forums and conducting research will be beneficial. When people complain about web hosts, it’s usually because of issues with reliability and customer service. These are the kinds of things that people remember, for better or worse. So you’re curious about how your prospective web host is remembered… because that’s likely how you’ll be remembered as well.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned price once in this article. There’s a good reason for this. I’m not saying that price isn’t important, especially since reseller web hosting plans vary greatly in terms of both price and the amount of space/bandwidth you get for your money. However, all of the other factors I’ve mentioned are far more significant. After you’ve narrowed down the web hosts you’d be willing to use based on dependability, features, and customer support, you can consider price. Best wishes!