Reseller Hosting: The Good and The Bad!
Reseller webhosting can be a great way to earn some extra money
on the side for your business or even a full time job once you
get into it. Though this can be a great way to do business, it
can come with some un-foreseen downsides, headaches and a whole
lot more. Not to say that you can't be successful at it, but you
must first take the steps to assure that down the road it
doesn't ruin your business.
An important part when dealing with reseller hosting is that
some of the control has been taking out of your hands. This is
important because you have to trust in the company you are doing
business with and this limits to some things you can do. I speak
from personal experience on this, the worst thing you can face
when reselling hosting is having a great amount of downtime. If
you every want to have some bad emails from your clients, choose
a host that doesn't have good uptime.
How much uptime and downtime you have is really not for you to
decide, as you are not the one looking over the server. The
company you are going through may not be as professional as you
and they figure what is a few hours of waiting to get your site
up, Right? Wrong! The worse thing I have seen is clients sites
going down and when you go to that company's website who you do
business with, all you think is "oh my, their site is down too
and I can't get in touch with them". This can cause allot of
headaches for your and your clients, it can even cost your
business.
The best thing to do before going with a hosting company is to
get a list of reference sites if you can, to see if they go
down. Also watch the company's site you are planning to go with
and see if it ever goes down. If so, how quick does it come back
up? Another great thing to do is ask around, if the company has
good or bad service, then there will be people out there to
comment on this, trust me. Also don't be afraid to email those
people who had a problem with that hosting company and ask them
what exactly happened.
Also when dealing with a company, make sure they offer a good
list of services and features that you can offer to your
clients. Check with them to see how flexible they are with
different scenarios as well as adding on new features. Remember
a good company with go the extra mile to show you that they can
be trusted.