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How much to oversell/The differences in host offerings
| Posted by tokyoprogressive, 06-23-2011, 02:32 AM |
| While waiting for responses from Inno and EZPZ, I happened to notice that Sandvox, which I use to create simple sites, recommends A2 Hosting. So I contacted them.
They too are nice, and when I pointed out that the other two don't charge for SSL certificates, they admitted there was a one time charge. Still, all in all, the offerings are very similar and they seem to have a good rep.
Why I am interested in them is they would allow me to deep link from my page to their more expensive offerings (dedicated servers, etc. as an affiliate.
Also, they seem to have more space and bandwidth, which relates to the part below about how to decide on how much to offer if you are going to oversell. They allow it, so they must have some ideas, but no-one is very upfront about this.
Anyway, with A2, I could use the reseller account to host my own ready made websites for a small fee, sell webspace for those who want to do it themselves, as well as suggest higher priced things to those who want that as an affiliate.
That would seem to cover my bases and allow me to compensate for being unable to compete in the MBs and GBs.
One of the problems I notices is that resellers already sell hosting so cheap that I can't see how one can offer anything close.
And every time I ask, they all say they cannot advise how many hosts and at what cost. But they say I must be careful not to violate the terms of service.
So that is the question.
If overselling is allowed, and all 3 seem to, and if there are as many as 25 accounts possible in Inno hosting and unlimited in the other two, then how does one do the math (my weak subject?).
A2 offers 50Gb as opposed to EZPZ's 5 GB in web space. and 500 GB as opposed to their 100 GB bandwidth.
Do you break a reseller plan down into 25 bits, in the case of Inno? Then you get amazingly small amounts such as 200 MB.
Or do you make up a figure, say 500 or 1 GB when the actual number is close to 200 MB in the case of Inno and 25 clients. A2's 50 GB space for allow you to give 25 people each 2 GB of space, or you could oversell, but at what percentage? I see no clear guidance on this. Anyway, see their basic plan has a higher figure to start with, there would seem less need to oversell.
As you can see I am not so crazy about getting rich as i am in being fair, even though it seems everyone is saying overselling is ok.
It seems you risk going over the limit if you just make up stuff as you go along, and when something happens, what do you do?
So for those of you who ARE overselling, what guidelines do I follow. I do not see anyone who actually gives a figure of what percent to use.
Thanks!
paul
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| Posted by PremiumHost, 06-23-2011, 10:14 PM |
| Overselling feature for reseller is when reseller quota is actual usage instead of amount of disk space & bandwidth you allocated to sub-accounts.
That allows you create more hosting accounts and make more money.
As a reseller, you should come up with reasonable plans so you can grow your business sustainable.
Any providers will oversell at particular level.
An experienced provider will not oversell their servers to a point that customers run away because of poor performance.
Of course there are other issues that might affect server & websites hosted like ddos attack or power/network problem at data center.
Last edited by PremiumHost; 06-23-2011 at 10:21 PM.
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| Posted by Forward Web, 06-24-2011, 02:18 AM |
| The best advice I could give you is to treat your reseller package like it was a dedicated server. Do some shopping for some dedicated servers and figure out how much diskspace/bandwidth you (not your provider) can provide (while making a profit) and that should answer most of your questions.
If thinks go well, you will eventually make the hop from a basic reseller plan, to leasing or collocating your own server. With that being said, its always best to plan ahead. I think once you get a better understanding you will realize that its pretty much a level playing field regarding what web hosts can actually offer (at least in a shared environment);. The big difference is some host try to cut the rest of their competition by cutting costs and claiming to offer more resources that they can actually support (which always ends up being their downfall).
Anyway, I hope that makes sense.
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| Posted by tokyoprogressive, 06-24-2011, 10:48 AM |
| Thank you. Regarding overselling, it seems that everyone is into stating the space and bandwidth, even if they are not really offerring all that. And if you think about it, most simple web sites do not need all the space.
(Regarding the dedicated server method, thanks. Something to think about. Am not really thinking about making a lot of money, but if I can, ok. Want to make a little money as I offer stuff to NGOs and the like....)
If I want to be honest with a customer, I would have with on the cheapest plans:
5GB space, 100 GB BW with EZPZ and Inno. Inno limits to 25 people and EZPZ has no limit.
But think about it.
Let's say I get just 5 customers. I offer 1GB and 20.
10 customers: 500 MB and 10.
20: 250 and 5.
That sounds ridiculous to advertise. I do not see anyone advertising those. So I guess most people are not being straight because they know most people use a fraction of what they sign up for.
Now, I do small websites for NGOs. I noticed that they take up less than 80 MBs!!! Mail probably takes up more. So I think, why play that game of space and BW? A couple of sites I respect in the NPO field do not do things this way. They instead charge for resources used......one of them hosts the sites I donate. As I said, the amount of space is really small. I got a bill for one of the one. It is a very small web site, the kind I will probably do the most hosting of:
Web Hosting 3 megabytes
3 kilohits
1 gigabit transferred--is 1 GB or much smaller?
And that is 5 dollars (for that month). So they charge 60 bucks for a very small amount of resources,
For my own site, which is huge, with drupal, a mailing list and lots of email stored:
Web Hosting 1969 megabytes/81 kilohits
14 gigabits transferred Base fee: $5.00
Extra megabytes: ($0.10 per 100): $1.70
NPOGroups 3 open groups
1914 subscribers
2 gigabits transferred Base fee: $7.50
Now they are not particularly cheap buy I use them for myself because they are a workers collective and I support their progressive causes. Gaia host, an affiliate of theirs has a similar setup. Web and email, 10 dollars a month. 1024 MB and 5 GB bandwith.
Neither of these two offers CPANEL. Strictly FTB. So you have to do it all yourself.
Well, I give the examples because what I am thinking is that with the relatively small amount of space I will initially have, I cannot hope to compete on actual space with all the hosts and resellers there are. So I am thinking why try?
I will be doing two kinds of hosting--one through the control panel, where people can sign up themselves and pretty much it is all automated and serviced by EZPZ or Inno. It almost seems like I can just say, for example:
1 GB web space and 5GB 8 dollars a month
2 GB web space and 10 GB bandwidth 12 dollars a month
Or maybe just a single plan (one of the above)
(I don't like to overinflate, but perhaps I am being too conservative).
And probably I won't ever go over..... (I hope) And if I do, I hope I am at least breaking even so that I don't have to buy the next highest plan at a loss.
But I think my real hosting will be as subdomains of my own account. Both of the resellers said I could do that as long as it is not part of the reseller site....people contact me personally and ask me to create a small web page for them. I even offer to update it periodically. Sothe service is the site creation and maintenance, i would be targeting NPOs and academic groups. I will not need to give them Cpanel at all. And they would not have to go through the web interface either. I could probably host many of such sites and make enough by charging a basic hosting fee that includes the domain name, the site, and maybe 10 hours of updates a year.
For NGOs it could be 100 dollars a year or a sliding scale.
For individuals it could be maybe a bit more, say 130 a year.
Well, a lot of thinking. I will figure something out.
Thanks agains for the suggestions.
Last edited by tokyoprogressive; 06-24-2011 at 10:51 AM.
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| Posted by turnkeyinternet, 06-24-2011, 10:16 PM |
| Hell Paul - Just because the reseller hosting provider, also sells a competing shared hosting product, does not mean they will be actively marketing and in front of the same target audience you will be.
Pick a niche (maybe its local businesses, or maybe it's restaurants and hospitality businesses you focus vertically on for selling your hosting services). Pick the niche, and provide great service and support- and you won't have to worry about the competition's price plans or feature set.
A good reseller hosting provider is going to make sure your clients, never see they exist (using private label / white label) techniques such as dedicated ip's for your clients that are registered (SWIP'd) in your name, and reverse dns in your name, and server names that are generic, etc. So in reality your clients wont know there is a competing provider involved at all behind the scenes.
Best of luck to your web hosting resale venture.
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