Hiding Vortech with Dedicated IPs?

[Brangwyn]

Whilst I obviously can't speak for Vortech, I do think the fact that Brad does offer usage based traffic rather than allocation does indicate that he doesn't have any big problems with overselling.

If we use more traffic than our plan has, they get paid for it, so why should they care ?, in fact they make more money if we pay for it as an overage than they do if we pay for it as an upgrade, or perhaps put another way they loose less if we pay for it as an overage .

[bootNumlock]

i would be interested in hearing more discussions from the true resellers about how much time, energy, etc. goes into running the reseller business. I say true reseller, as i only sell space to the clients that i design and produce sites...therefore, i offer huge discounts on hosting--with that said, reselling actually works out to be a benefit to my clients, because i only make sure that i have covered my monthy fees ($100) and then the rest is profit [which in my case is not much] but i do make money on the dev side...

Please chime in on business strategies of the reselling as i may be interested in offering hosting in a limited capacity--unless you all scare me off the idea

Brangwyn--are you a 'true' reseller?

[Brangwyn]

Yes I'm Probably more of what you'd call a 'true' reseller than anything else.

As for time and energy I probably spend on average a few minutes per customer per day so thats currently 2-3 hours probably.

I spend little time on advertising currently, $30 or so on google adwords per month, and just let my sig in the other forums I moderate/post on do the rest of the advertising for me (I have probably 15,000+ posts across all the forums I post on regularly so thats a lot of advertising for nothing basically).

As for business strategy well thats really a bit of an individual thing imo, but the best way is to find yourself a niche market that you can serve well and just focus on that. Personally I still consider good quality windows hosting with knowledgable support a niche market.

[mresell]

bootnumlock02,
I suspect a large amount of their resellers fit into a similiar category. It makes adding a service that much easier. It does make it harder since vortechhosting sells direct to public. I realize that is not vortech's intention, but there are some people that are gonna figure if it is good enough for you why pay more. Personally, I think you should make a profit on hosting(like everything else). There is an advantage in dealing w/ the person who designs and develops because they know what features and services you have and it is easier to deal w/ one business than 2.

[antic]

I've had much brow-furrowing about how to appear competitive, not only against other providers, but against Vortech themselves, unfortunate as that may be.

My conclusion is that, given the current reseller traffic allocation, it's almost impossible to compete on simple face value. Storage space and other resources yes; but as long as other providers (Vortech incl.) are over-selling traffic, we have no choice but to do the same, or have another hook for clients.

Luckily I'm also a software/web developer and, as Brangwyn says, specialist knowledge is an asset that helps. This is especially true when your clients are largely a source of development revenue as well, as they are with me - that's my hook.

Basically I wouldn't recommend competing based on the hosting package alone. I'd recommend aiming at a niche market, also as Brangwyn says, which could even be your local community, so you're able to provide other things of benefit.

If you're a marketeer, you could attract community custom by advertising local businesses for free on your service site - in return, those businesses offer discounts to your customers - a kind of "discount card" system. Just a thought.

[Brangwyn]

I actually started off as a developer, but found I got more business from people just wanting hosting and good support, so I droped much of my contract work to allow me to spend more time on supporting my hosting customers, installing aps for them, testing, fixing other developers sloppy code etc

[gadgetgal99]

I doubt anyone is going to go past your limits. If they do they are either an adult content provider who we do not support or a client that should be on a dedicated or vps solution and not shared hosting anyway. If you think this is going to happen, look for a secondary hosting that lets you resell dedicated solutions. We are still waiting to here id Matrix is going to implement plans with the Hsphere VPS.

[antic]

Now that sounds interesting, considering a couple of clients I do have... reselling VPS would be very handy there.

The reason I'm a bit paranoid about reliability is that I've written a system for one client that will be used around the clock by their customers. It's not a case of hosting a brochure site where no-one will care or even notice if it's down for a couple of hours.

The site also keeps track of online transactions, reward points and customer referral relationships. Money in other words. If they lose that sort of data, someone's gonna get a major kick in the butt and don't want it to be me.

I gather that I must say to them that I can't even guarantee regular backups on the server, but they can do this themselves online at any time. I'm not sure if they'll buy that.

What an interesting experience this is...

[DigitalSkyline]

I agree with most of you stating its almost impossible to compete on features or even with vortech itself. Thankfully I'm like Bootlock and am not in the hosting business to make money (much). I sell a package of services including development, online marketing, etc., of which hosting is only part.

My customers need only contact my company for everything to do with their web sites... eliminating the technical and logistics problems involved in dealing with multiple providers.

#1 rule -- competing on price is futile, especially in todays market.

Successful sales people realize price should not be a selling factor, value and perceived value is what sales is all about. Sure I could probably buy a old school big screen TV for about a grand nowadays... but everyone really wants the newest, biggest plasma TV's that cost 5 times as much. Most would be willing to go in to debt to get what they want rather then stay above red and compromise.

How do you compete with free anyways? Surely not on price.

And what of the 'big' dogs like Yahoo and Microsoft and others in the hosting business?

In this economy selling has to become a grass-roots effort ... like Brangwyn on various forums, or in person, selling has to be about relationship building.

If not, the chips are stacked against you.

[antic]

You're absolutely right DS. I find most of the discussions here are not just incredibly informative but also incredibly interesting!

[Silverbug]

Exactly in today market there is basicaly no way you can compete on price. because the moment you list your prices someone cheaper is always going to come along. The only way you can beat that person is to compete in service. If you can prove that you can provide better service to the customer then thats where the advantage is. I think this is the reason that vortech has so many happy clients too. we all know there are cheaper reseller plans out there but the level of service doesnt even begin to come close to what we have here.

[muthukumar]

i think what resellers say to thier clients about themselves is none of any ones business , as or me i never say iam a reseller, if i say iam a reseller, the next obvious Q will be from who are u buying space, and after taking a look at the prices which is not that much, all my corporate clients who can easily afford will switch to the vortech directly bypassing me

I always claim i have dedicated servers, else my none of my clients will be half-as intrested since iam not in control of my servers, why i should i be entrusted with thier data, that's how thier thinking goes, so i usually zip about the reseller part

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by muthukumar

I always claim i have dedicated servers, else my none of my clients will be half-as intrested since iam not in control of my servers, why i should i be entrusted with thier data, that's how thier thinking goes, so i usually zip about the reseller part

The issue I see happening with resellers that claim they own the equipment is sooner or later, a customer of yours is going to want to SEE the equipment. Which would require getting into the data center here. Trust me, it happens. Then how do you explain to the customer that you do not have access to the building where your equipment is??

[dlrmartin]

Only if customer lives in Orlando....
I don't believe worldwide customer wants to travel to Orlando...

[nhdonny]

direct from netsol, matrixleasing.com is available. might not be a bad idea for those who take offense with the reseller term and technically we're not reselling. At best we're like my landlord who sublets the space he leases in this building.

I know this is an old thread but my feeling is I'd much rather deal with the smaller host that is honest and sells the strengh of working with a company that specializes in managing servers. I've known too many guys who insisted on doing it all themselves and have servers in the basement on a 20 minute battery.

My job is web design, data management and hosting. My job is not tuning servers, patching NT, swapping HDs and all the other skills that have no legitimate relation to what I do.

Many customers used to spend a few hours each week with Frontpage and finally realized it ain't what they're supposed to be doing. If I'm worrying about servers and bandwidth I'm not designing or selling, my jobs.