I'm after some advice from existing resellers please. I have always got my customers to provide their own hosting which has worked well until now but I have been increasingly asked to provide hosting on their behalf and have taken the plunge and am opening a reseller account of my own.

My dilemma is regarding providing support to my customers. As a hosting customer myself, the most important thing to me after reliability is the quality of support that I receive from my host and how easy they are to contact. As a self employed designer the prospect of offering 24/7 support is not just daunting but impossible. My wife gets annoyed enough with how much time I spend online and I'm sure I would heading for divorce if I increased that even more. Taking a laptop on holiday would definitely be the last straw

I am not looking to use my reseller account for selling low cost hosting and will therefore not be having hundreds of customers and the associated support issues. It will be existing or new clients that I have produced sites for or hosting for friends and family. Many of these sites are not business critical, although there are a number of online stores which obviously need a higher level of support.

So I am keen to hear how other designers/resellers who have been or are in a similar situation to myself. How have you handled this? What bits of advice they would give and suggestions for how I should approach this?

cheers

Giles

Hey man,

There are a couple of ways. Smaller companies (Resellers also) sometimes use indian companies to outsource support. However, you need a large enough customer base that is paying you monthly for it. I can't stress enough that its mainly down to you for the support. However, there are companies out there that will handle it for you, but then again they cost some $ so your profit margins shrink.

If you really dont have many customers and cant afford any support you can always sell your cusotmers on to a company that can support them something like that? You can get paid hansomly for them and have to worry about the support etc...

Cheers

Hi Giles,
The **key** here is finding your best upstream provider.
The normal procedure for reselling is you provide support to your clients....and in turn YOU get your support from your upstream.

Hosting has changed so much over the years (Ive been in business since 1999) I think there are many myths strewn about as far as whats required to get started.
A "reseller" account is the perfect way to test the waters to see if you even like that end of the business. I will instantly *caution* you to do as much research on "your upstream provider" BEFORE signing up anywhere.

Hosting is a great enhancement for freelance designers. I started as a reseller myself and then we moved over to a dedicated system with Alabanza.

With a right provider I dont think you are going to be bogged down with support tickets. Look at all your options. We have some clients that do have a reseller account because its easier when adding your own accounts.....then there are some that simply send us clients they design for , etc. and do not want anything further to do with the client.

There are too many fly-by-night companies out there now. I would advise looking at the long-term outlook for YOU....keep in mind ones that offer unlimited domains for one small price...just might be out of business down the road An upstream provider HAS to have some basics down as far as "pricing"...........in order to sustain their own buisness!!

I agree, choosing the right server company to get your reseller account from is key. If they do their job right, the only support you'll be doing is telling them how to setup their email every once in a while.

-Chris

One way, might be slower in some cases, is e-mailing your host the question(s) that were sent to you,

As Martie told if your upstream provider chosen well, he'll provide support for YOUR clients.

I think its good though if you have a relationship with some of your hosting clients that they can call or email you with anything. People like that sort of stuff.

If its a small problem, like adding an email address to someones account or installing fantistico there is no need sometimes to escalate the problem to the provider.

I actually don't like the idea of outsourcing a lot, it's always better to have in-house support, which makes the whole process more reliable for youy as well as for your clients, so choose an upstraem provider with inhouse support who will do support for you. There are a lot of hosting companies, offering this feature tbhost.com, experthost.com, ahosting.biz. Just make search on them, look for reviews and ask at other forums.

The idea of outsourcing is very good. You may use the third party that can support your clients for very little fee. And you can be away for a while not being afraid of losing your business.

As Martie stated, your upstream provider should be a critical choice. Make sure you do your research and be willing to pay a few extra bucks. You'll end up with less problems, therefor, less support requests.

Aside from the upstrem provider, its a good idea to be knowledgable about the types of clients your hosting. Understanding there needs from the beginning will help prevent problems later on down the road. For example, if a user is operating a forum, it'd be a good idea to monitor their mysql usage and assist them with finding slow queries and performing the appropriate indicies.