What do Resellers want?

[Denver Dave]

I realize that different resellers want different things. I have reseller accounts with 4 hosting companies and except for this week, Dathorn was my 2nd most favorite account even though it is the cheapest.

I thought I'd start a discussion on this topic because I've wondered if some of my needs may be contrary to Dathorn objectives. I am primarily a webmaster for relatively low volume / load sites and my main concern is having reliable hosting for my clients.

So while it's nice to have more bandwidth, space and low priced hosting, in my case I certainly am willing to trade off all of the three for reliable good performance.

[AndrewT]

Moved to more appropriate forum.

[AndrewT]

This post is somewhat puzzling to me as you are on cpanel19 as per your other post. HTTP on this server has only been down for 13 minutes over the past 85 days. Certainly load issues may arise from time to time, and today I was performing maintenance on the server as per your other thread. But to be perfectly honest, load issues will become an issue with any shared hosting account - it's the very nature of the service.

If you are wanting 100% uptime then you certainly shouldn't be using a shared hosting provider.

[Denver Dave]

That is a good point that perhaps I should be considering some kind of dedicated server. My reluctance is that I have probably won more copies of unix than times I've used Unix commands. I confess that Dathorn was an experiment and I did not see how DH could offer the service that I needed for the price charged - but you did.

Out of the reseller accounts that I have at 4 hosting companies, DH is my 2 most favorite. Strangely the most expensive account is not my favorite.

I have been nervous when specials for more bandwidth and space have been offered because I was worried about the impact on reliabilty and performance.

How about a offer to be on a "premium" reliability / performance server - perhaps for more $ or perhaps with less bandwidth / space for the same money.

I'd say that 2nd out of 4 for reliability and 1st out of 4 for best price was a great accomplishment - for the future, I hope this can continue - if not - how about charging more ?

[AndrewT]

We have no plans to change our current offers, the specials do nothing in terms of quality of service. Bandwidth and disk space are readily available. Your server has been one of the top performers over the past 3 months or so and if the problems that have occured are too much then you truly need to find a managed dedicated server and it will cost a great deal more, but even then there could still be problems to create 13 minutes of downtime over 85 days.

[ChrisTech]

Only thing I'd really like to see here, would be an upgrade to a VPS or a Dedicated server option, if/when you outgrew your reseller account(s).

I have 2 reseller accounts here, and have been nothing but happy. I've spent almost 3 years here so far, and I'm still here. I'm on Cpanel08 (overall uptime 99.823% & Cpanel24 (overall uptime 99.794%). I really don't have much I can want. I already have great service, for a cheap price (I've done the double space/bandwidth offer on both accounts), great uptime, fast trouble ticket responses & resolutions. Before Dathorn I had 4 different hosts. None which lastest more than a few months. It's a hassel packing up and moving to a new host.

[Buddha]

I realize that different resellers want different things. I have reseller accounts with 4 hosting companies and except for this week, Dathorn was my 2nd most favorite account even though it is the cheapest.

Currently I have four reseller accounts at three different hosts.

I thought I'd start a discussion on this topic because I've wondered if some of my needs may be contrary to Dathorn objectives. I am primarily a webmaster for relatively low volume / load sites and my main concern is having reliable hosting for my clients.

Doing about the same.

So while it's nice to have more bandwidth, space and low priced hosting, in my case I certainly am willing to trade off all of the three for reliable good performance.

My definition of reliable maybe a little different than yours. I started on cPanel03. This is my third server here at Dathorn after two DDOS attacks. Downtime sometimes cannot be avoided even for entire Data Centers. However, Dathorn has proven to me when the @#$% hits the fan they're there to fix the problem. Even the really big problems that aren't easily fixed. That's the kind of reliabilty you can't simply look for in a host. It takes a disaster to reveal it. Dathorn is 1st in my book with good reason.

Can't really think of anything new I'd like to see at Dathorn? I'm sure Andrew is still trying to figure out how to do PHP5. Maybe Dathorn could offer discounts on ClientExec or WHMAutopilot or one of the others for customers that are interested? Some of those have reseller programs I think?

[AndrewT]

Just as an FYI...

We are in the process of changing our upgrade server hardware this month and it will include additional RAM and SCSI hard drives this time around. This should allow for tremendous performance increases as we replace existing servers with their awful IDE RAID controllers that have done nothing but create problems for us. Current non-upgraded servers will be done first with the others following. The only possible downside to this is that we will be changing IP address ranges and DNS IPs will have to be changed in some cases. These plans will be explained in greater detail when the time comes.

With the new hardware platform we hope to add PHP5 run as CGI in addition to PHP4 w/ phpsuexec. Also, our backup system will change to be more like cPanel backups to make them easier to restore entirely if necessary.

We are also exploring the option of offering Fantastico instead of the CPSkins.com auto-installers. This has yet to be decided on one way or another.

Offering ClientExec might be an option if enough users were interested in it. Obviously the price would be far less than that of the $12/month they sell it for (probably less than $4/month).

[-Oz-]

i love reseller hosting because I can easily host my sites and keep track of them. I also spent 4 weeks at field training for the air force and came home and everything had worked perfectly while I was gone. That is reliability I like.

[ChrisTech]

I for one, would love to see Client Exec from Dathorn. I used to have it, but I got tired of paying (then $10) per month for it.

[djn]

Did I really read PHP5?

WOW!

[AndrewT]

Did I really read PHP5?

WOW!

No typos here!