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Reseller account pre-sales questions: feedback please!
| Posted by hansBKK, 03-25-2007, 10:46 AM |
| This third batch of questions relate to reseller accounts. To see all question sets posted so far, do an advanced search here for "pre-sales" posted under my username.
What I'm primarily looking for is **feedback on the questions themselves**. Many are basic and self-explanatory, but perhaps for some: a) the question could be refined for clarity or completeness b) everyone would answer the same, or no hoster would want to answer so I might as well not ask or c) there might be an important related question that I should be asking but have missed.
Here we go:
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Do you offer "private label" reselling? Can the reseller customise the customers' control panel?
In what ways could a determined end-user customer discover you are the actual hosting company?
Do you allow resellers to "oversell" their space/bandwidth? (Actual Use Method or Allocated Method)
Describe your CPU/RAM "resource abuse" policy regarding resellers - do all a reseller's sub-accounts added together have the same restrictions as a single retail customer? If one of the sub-accounts is over-utilising CPU or RAM, do you shut down just the offending sub-account, or all the domains under that reseller?
If you have a limit on the number of email messages sent per hour, does that limit apply to each sub-account or to the resellers' total pool of customers?
Do you provide end-user support directly to reseller's customers? Is there an extra cost for this?
Can I resell VPS and/or dedicated servers, dedicated IPs, custom SSL certificates?
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Note that if you are going to use a question list like this yourself make SURE you try to get as much of the information as possible yourself BEFORE contacting the hosting companies. Their sales and support staff get very annoyed answering questions that are already clearly answered on their site, and while good hosters don't mind demanding customers, they don't want ones that are lazy time-wasting idiots (whoops was that too harsh? )
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Current shortlist - feedback on any of these hosters would be welcome, especially if anyone who's actually been a customer has had serious problems with honesty, reliability support or customer service with any of them. Not in any certain order:
budgetreseller.com asmallorange.com blurstorm.com hostnine.com cartikahosting.com dotable.com jodohost.com relio.com innohosting.com wirenine.com downtownhost.com idologic.com steadfast.net kualo.com
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| Posted by Ahoy, 03-25-2007, 05:20 PM |
| A comment -
My expiriance shows, that u need to ask (in advance, for a high ration of emails/domain/hour and then leave ur self a place to bargin the final quota a bit ....
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| Posted by wbengal, 03-26-2007, 02:03 AM |
| I had an account with kualo.com and was plagued by a whole bunch of problems - poor support from outsourced staff in India, bad attitude from some of their UK based managers / lead staff, billing issues and so on. I learnt my lessons and moved my accounts elsewhere.
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| Posted by Website Rob, 03-26-2007, 09:23 AM |
| Your questions look good. Short, to the point, and not an excessive number.
I'll even answer one question for you, which any Hoster should answer the same.
Q. In what ways could a determined end-user customer discover you are the actual hosting company?
A. None... when done properly. A person may discover who the DC is, which should not be a big deal, but they will not discover who 'you' are getting your Hosting from.
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| Posted by rv_irl, 03-26-2007, 09:40 AM |
| Questions look good..
I have read your previous threads, and would like to put forward one recommendation if you ever decide to pose these questions to potential hosts..
Number them
Structure them
Break them down into suitable parts..
For example..
Break it down into several parts..
E.g.
1. Describe your CPU/RAM "resource abuse" policy regarding resellers
1A) do all a reseller's sub-accounts added together have the same restrictions as a single retail customer?
1B) If one of the sub-accounts is over-utilising CPU or RAM, do you shut down just the offending sub-account, or all the domains under that reseller?
Although no actual change is made, it makes it easier to answer and easier for you to review the answers (assuming the host will answer in the same fashion)..
For short brief questions, you don't need to structure in that manner, but since it looks like you have a lot of questions, structuring your questions is just as important as the questions themselves..
Good luck
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| Posted by astutiumRob, 03-26-2007, 01:44 PM |
| Anyone remotely determined will alays be able to find out who the upstream is by the netblock on the ip's the route announcements and so on.
IME most "resellers" are adding value to their offerings above and beyond what the upstream host provides, rather than simply buying an account to chop-up and sell on, so its not an issue.
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 03-26-2007, 07:58 PM |
| I would say this is correct - you can always find out, if determined - who the upstream provider is. Having said this, the typical end user for a reseller client will not go through such exhaustive measures. Some of the things I have learned about anonymity are as follows:
1) its important, but not critical. Most resellers, as indicated above, are providing value on top of hosting - and their typical end user is not on a witch hunt to determine how those hosting services are provided - as long as the service is reliable. Additionally, most reseller clients do not hide the fact that they are resellers
2) simple things like mail headers, bounced messages, etc - even with a private label domain will quickly yield the root provider to anyone that knows what they are doing
3) considering points 1 and 2 above, the reseller customers that have the highest degree of success typically are not worried about anonymity - this isnt to say that they want these things to be transparent - however, a truely successful reseller client is more focussed on their value added services - and as long as the hosting service is reliable, it can provide a nice recurring revenue stream with minimal associated headaches...
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| Posted by Website Rob, 03-27-2007, 08:22 AM |
| Excuse me, the upstream provider would be the DC, would it not? Which I covered.
If one has setup their Reseller Servers to not use the Company Domain name, use Domain name protection with the Registrar, and provide personalized Nameservers for the Reseller, finding out who the Reseller gets their Hosting from becomes very, very difficult, if not impossible.
I didn't think I would have to explain 'when done properly' to another Hoster.
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| Posted by astutiumRob, 03-27-2007, 09:37 AM |
| Not usually, you'd never know who any of our 9 datacentres are unless you read the websites, not everyone gets their transit from the building managers ...
Is all irrelevant when a simple ping, traceroute and whois will tell you everything you need to know about the IP ...
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 03-27-2007, 10:33 AM |
| Easy Rob - all we are saying is that you can always, if determined enough, discover if someone is a reseller and for whom -
Granted, the degree of difficulty in acquiring this information can vary - but honestly - to the people that really care to find out - it doesnt matter what you do - to the average consumer - the steps you have outlined above are certainly more then sufficient.
Cheers for now...
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| Posted by hansBKK, 03-27-2007, 12:16 PM |
| Point well taken on the structuring, although a rep might be perturbed to be asked question 27, then 79 b and 107 c
Cartika mentioned mail bouncing. I was hoping to be able to use a dedicated IP for my domain's mailhost, with proper reverse lookup for PTR/SPF. Am I dreaming? The side benefit would of course be that bit stronger anonymity.
I am also considering separating out the webhosting from the mail servers, I've seen some reports of email unreliability with hosts that are otherwise stellar.
Surprised to hear the negative on kualo, but then again most of the rave reviews here are now a bit dated, things do change quickly in this biz it seems. . .
I had decided not to post any new question lists here due to what I consider unprofessional treatment by the mods here, will carry on on usenet, same handle.
Thanks to all for some great feedback!
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| Posted by IHSL, 03-27-2007, 12:38 PM |
| Even if you switch to a dedicated IP, the outgoing email will always go out on the actual IP of the mail server. The only other way to do it (and you'd still have the ip ownership lookup "problem") is to set up your own standalone mail server on a VPS or dedicated server.
Simon
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| Posted by hansBKK, 03-27-2007, 02:03 PM |
| Ouch, sorry, just learning here.
I thought sendmail would be running on the same server as my website. I was planning on using a mailing list manager package that would queue up the messages and then send them out in batches, assuming the host has a messages/hour limit.
For example, when a PHP mailform script sends out a message on my current server, it comes from "apache@hostname" by default. I haven't traced the headers, but I assumed that the local sendmail service sent it directly to the relevant SMTP host for the destination address domain. But even if it relayed, wouldn't the originating SMTP header be the IP address of that web server?
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| Posted by IHSL, 03-27-2007, 02:38 PM |
| Yes, sendmail is running on the same server. However, what I was addressing was that no matter what IP your site is on, the mail sent out from the server goes out via the mail service IP, not that of your own dedicated IP.
Example:
Let's say your web site has it's own dedicated IP: 192.168.0.108
The server has an example address of: 192.168.0.107
So when you send mail out from your web site via sendmail, the outgoing IP (and one that will be traced for PTR/rDNS records) will be .107, even though your site is on .108.
Don't worry about not understanding that from the start: A lot of users instantly think "Dedicated IP" when they see the mail server they are on is blacklisted. It's very common on WHT, for sure.
Simon
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 03-27-2007, 03:34 PM |
| hansBKK, not a problem - ask all of the questions you need. However, Simon has outlined this all pretty well.
Honestly, no matter how hard you try to private label everything, if someone really wants to know if you are a reseller and knows what they are doing, they will find out. However, and again I must stress - a typical end user client will not care - as long as the service is good - therefore, making the right decision on a provider is critical - and I would focus more on the other questions outline here, as they are certainly more important - having said this, you do want a provider that has taken all of the basic, necessary steps, to provide anonymity - as long as you understand that there are always holes in this.
Cheers for now and best of luck !!!
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| Posted by hansBKK, 03-27-2007, 09:17 PM |
| Thanks to you both.
Andrew, the smtp issue is only loosely related to the reseller anonymity.
I actually want to make sure that when I send out my school's newsletter (4000+ emails at a time) it stands as great a chance as possible of avoiding being classified as spam.
Hence I want to make sure my SMTP host can be configured as much as possible with rDNS/PTR and even SPF.
I'm starting to realise this may not be possible as part of a shared webhosting package? Please confirm.
If that's the case then I guess my options are to look for separate mail hosting services, or last resort, setting up our own SMTP host in-house - looking for a bulk-email friendly ISP locally is not going to be a trivial task.
And here are my email-related questions to ask hosting services, maybe you can advise on how I can/should adjust these? (e.g. "don't bother asking #2, no one does that)
1 - Will I be able to use my own domain name for the mail server?
2 - Can I use a dedicated IP for my mailserver with proper forward and reverse DNS lookups - PTR records matching my MX record, SPF?
3 - Do you have separate disk space restrictions for email, or is it just part of my overall space allocation?
4 - Do you limit the number of messages sent per hour per email account, per domain, per end-customer sub-account or per the resellers' total pool accounts?
5 - Can I run PHP scripts that send mail? Mail list management scripts? Swift Mailer or PEAR :: Package :: Mail?
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| Posted by astutiumRob, 03-27-2007, 09:49 PM |
| Check the content carefully, pre-run it through spamassassin and adjust the wording of anything it doesnt like. Ensure that all the recipients have agreed to recieve it and give them a way of unsubscribing easily (I'd recommend a decent mailer manager like 12ALL)
Then you need a VPS or dedicated server, you wont be able to do that in a shared environment, as the mail headers will show as a from of the main server IP.
separate mail hosting wont solve the problems you think you're going to face.
its more likely to be junked as spam from a dialup/dynamic range from an inhouse system - its looking more liek a dedi is what you need all the time.
>1 - Will I be able to use my own domain name for the mail server?
No
>2 - Can I use a dedicated IP for my mailserver with proper forward and reverse DNS lookups - PTR records matching my MX record, SPF?
No
>3 - Do you have separate disk space restrictions for email, or is it just part of my overall space allocation?
Provider dependant but *usually* part of the overall quota.
>4 - Do you limit the number of messages sent per hour per email account, per domain, per end-customer sub-account or per the resellers' total pool accounts?
Provider dependant, but *usually* yes to *something* like 3600/hour
A quality mail management package will work within your hosts limitations
>5 - Can I run PHP scripts that send mail? Mail list management scripts? Swift Mailer or PEAR :: Package :: Mail?[/QUOTE]
Provider dependant, remember most scripts will ensure the mail gets binned as it will appear to have come from "nobody"
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 03-28-2007, 12:20 AM |
| Hello,
These should be configured/can be configured in pretty much any environment. having said this, 4000 emails may be alot for a shared hosting environment. However, we often see much larger lists then this without any problems what so ever. If you spread out your mailings and dont receive any spam complaints, chances are you will be ok.
Yes, if the reseller provider creates server aliases for all of the servers to your domain. However, bounce messages will still reveal the root host providers domain - though, any decent reseller provider will have this server name private labelled
Usually it is part of your overall disk space requirement
This will vary from provider to provider. In our environment there is no hard limit - however, you do want to stay below the radar, so if you break mailings into batches of 500-1000 and dont receive any spam complaints, typically you would not have any issues.
Most providers will allow this - however again, the secret to flying under the radar is to batch your mailings and ensure your lists are clean and do not generate any spam complaints..
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| Posted by hansBKK, 03-28-2007, 02:42 AM |
| Andrew, thanks so much for your informative reply.
Can you recommend freeware/opensource mailing management tools that would help me minimise the impact on my host's resources?
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| Posted by Aussie Bob, 03-28-2007, 03:19 AM |
| Yep.
Yep, 100% water tight anonimity just isn't possible. If you're focussing all your efforts into finding this, you'll miss the boat. I started out with a sub average reseller account and within a few mths started renting dedicated servers and went from there. A reseller account will get the ball rolling, and starts you at the ground floor. It's up to you to see how high you want the lift to go.
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| Posted by hansBKK, 03-28-2007, 03:27 AM |
| Thanks Bob. I'm not saying it's a critical factor for me, but if some hosting services are more "opaque" than others, I'd like to know what the variables are when doing my comparison.
So far I have:
private DNS, ideally on dedicated IPs
customisable control panel
my domain in the mailserver name(s)
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 03-28-2007, 03:04 PM |
| Hello, I would say any decent mailing software that will let you batch your mailings will work. Again, the most important thing is to ensure zero or almost zero spam reports.
A good mailing script to look at would be:
http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/
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| Posted by Aussie Bob, 03-28-2007, 06:57 PM |
| I can't see that happening on a reseller account. You might want to think a VPS if you wanted the mailserver name to be in your domain.
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