Thread: Web hosting: Would you knowingly buy from a hosting reseller?

I'm not a tech guy when it comes to this stuff, but it seems to me there is not much of an advantage.

Prices might be slightly cheaper but:

* The servers are not in your physical possession in case of a customer emergency

* What you can and cant do, in terms of customer service is probably limited to the policies of the parent company.


I'd like to here from those in the IT field on what they think about hosting resellers.

A) is it a profitable business venture and B) as a customer, would you knowingly subscribe to one?

thanks

As a customer I would not work with a hosting provider if I knew they were a reseller. At that point all they are really responsible for is customer service, and both godaddy and host gator have free 24 hours service on both. That is all just my opinion though.

Thanks Mia, now I know there are more IT people on here

I'd definitely go with someone who isn't reselling, which is kinda hard to find. I've been using steadfast.net for 7 years and can def recommend them. I love their cloud VPS platform as well.

Sorry, just noticed my post wasn't answering your exact question - i misunderstood.

I don't recommend reselling companies like GoDaddy or whatever... if you have your own virtual machines on a cloud, or your own couple of dedicated servers, you can run a hosting company from that and grow as you need.

I've noticed a lot of big companies offering this, Godaddy, rackspace, and hostgator to name a few. Maybe it's just a suckers game?, not to mention very competitive.

Originally Posted by Stance

I've noticed a lot of big companies offering this, Godaddy, rackspace, and hostgator to name a few. Maybe it's just a suckers game?, not to mention very competitive.

Hosting is one of the most competitive niches besides payday loans and the like. If you don't have a unique angle for your company like "we are wordpress hosting.. your site will be so fast and always updated" then it will be hard to get ROI on ads.. so you'll have to get organic traffic and that will be really hard too. Expect to start with $5-$10k for SEO.

Not trying to discourage you... I'm planning to offer hosting to customers of my web app eventually, but only after demand is there.

Any business, particularly one with an online presence or geared to online commerce, social media, etc. shouldn't be buying hosting, space, cloud services or bandwidth from a reseller. They should be on a dedicated server, or direct from the source. Either their own box in a rack somewhere (technical), or something managed by a host gator, one in one, etc. (non-technical).

I agree, get it direct from the source. Make sure they have chat and other fast support methods to ask a quick question. I like Hostgator, they are very fast in response time when you need help. Also the control panel you log into is much easier to use than GoDaddy or Blue Host...just my experience.

Originally Posted by IanZ63Q1

Not trying to discourage you... I'm planning to offer hosting to customers of my web app eventually, but only after demand is there.

No worries. I'm not looking at starting one, just learning more about them and their benefits, but there don't seem to be any lol.

We started with a reseller hosting account when we first started. Our customer service was to help those with no technical background who would find it difficult to talk to regular technical support. It was priced quite cheap as well.

After we out grew our reseller we expanded into our own dedicated servers and currently run in that configuration. We’re looking to expand again.

Hosting is extremely competitive, and as mentioned, having your advantage will help you stand out.