Hiding Vortech with Dedicated IPs?

[antic]

Hi. Sorry for the long windedness of this one, you can skip to the 3 questions at the bottom if you like.

I'm all set up as a reseller now, apart from having my own dedicated IPs. I have 5 to play with. I'm after "Best Practice" as it were, to set up my IP addresses so that everything resolves to my company name, not to Vortech Inc.


Issues:

1. Reverse-DNS on my "personal" name server IPs resolves them to NSx.VORTECHHOSTING.COM

2. WHOIS on the (shared) IP of my service domain resolves to Vortech Inc (naturally so coz it's shared)


This raises three (at the moment) questions:

1. Do dedicated IP's resolve to my company name, or to Vortech?

When I assign a dedicated IP to anything, and do a WHOIS on it, will it come up as registered to Vortech, or to my reseller company name?

2. Does my dedicated IP become the "shared IP" for all my clients?

Right now, I can assign a dedicated IP to my Service Domain, no problem. BUT as soon as another client signs up, they're gonna have a shared IP, which I assume will be Vortech's again. Can I set something up so that my clients' "shared IP" is *MY* IP, and that IP is registered to ME not to Vortech?

3. Can I have dedicated Name Server IPs?

The IPs for my "personal" Name Servers are of course resolving to Vortech Inc. Can I somehow set dedicated IPs for them? And will those IPs resolve to my company name, not to Vortech Inc.?

(Basically I thought a reseller could use 3 IP addresses - one that is used as the "shared IP" for all clients, and two that are assigned to the name servers - thus making Vortech Inc. invisible to clients.)

[jmbeach]

1. all the ip's we get here are owned by Vortech/Matrix, and these cannot be changed to reflect our company name. They'll always come up Vortech/Matrix/etc.

2. no, shared IP's are just that single IP used by that server. Any dedicated IP you apply is just for that domain it's applied to, even if it's your service domain. If you want to apply a dedicated IP to every sign up, you can do that, buy you'll be paying for them after 5, and they'll all reverse back to Vortech.

3. No, they did away with these months ago. We all now share the same nameserver ip's

I think all your questions really revolve around one thing. How do we look like we don't buy services from Vortech. Well, the short answer is it's probably the best it's ever going to be, and anyone that knows how to run reverses and other DNS tools will probably not buy hosting from you if that matters to them.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to shield ourselves from Vortech completely. Just be honest with your customers if they ask. Just tell them you lease space.

Originally posted by jmbeach
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to shield ourselves from Vortech completely. Just be honest with your customers if they ask. Just tell them you lease space.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Anyone ever try using the idea that being a reseller is better for your customers because you can personally help them, rather than them being lost in the smudge of a large corporation? Just a thought...

Maybe someone should start a thread on ways to honestly market your services to your customers, or at least to make it seem like being a reseller is not a big deal. Its not really a big deal, our company thrives on you guys to take care of the end-users. We wouldn't have time to focus on implementing new services and such if all we had were end-users... We already get enough phone calls about how to use FTP

[vonbrocklin]

I personally hate the word "reseller" - it sounds cheap and shady somehow even if it is an accurate description. When asked, I prefer to say:

"We lease space on a series of managed servers from Vortech Hosting."

Perfectly honest, and perfectly legitimate sounding.

[jmbeach]

I can recall a few posts over the past many months where resellers were claiming to own the datacenter, and had pages on their sites that stated this, with photos of the Vortech DC. I think one even said something about touring the DC.

I really don't understand who would want to make such a claim, especially when it cannot be backed up with truth if the end user wants more information. Personally, I'm not reselling to make a huge profit. I just need a place to host my own company sites, plus some space for some clients that would rather use me for everything, than having to use a handful of companies. Maybe this puts me in a position where I don't understand the plight of the average reseller, but I still don't think lying is helping anyone.

That's why I've been through a handful of other hosts before coming here. In the end, they were just resellers making claims they couldn't back up.

Now, Matrix/Vortech isn't some reseller out of China, are they?

[Brangwyn]

IP's aren't registered as single IP's either, you get assigned IP's in blocks and the owner of the block is always the person that will appear in the whois basically.

Fairly sure if you did a lookup on an ev1.net dedicated machine you'd see they own the IP too not the customer.

[dlrmartin]

Again on the arena....

I don't want to someone call me dishonest for claim "private label"
I be honest with all clients and potentials.

We DON'T say them "We have a DC" or "We have many servers"...
We are honest and say, as say vonbrocklin, "we lease space, bandwith and servers to a DC". The fact is that I'm not dishonest for not reveal who is my DC provider. This is the point.

I don't want to my clients seeing how much I'm paying for services that later I sell them, calculating my profits or compare my prices with vortech prices....
It isn't dishonest !!.

As in that time, I think best solution would be that matrix use other non-relationed to vortech name to register their IPs ...
Sincerey I never understand which is the problem with that...

I'm desagree with antic that claim IP with his company name.

We, as others resellers don't try to lying or be dihonest only want to be care with our business.

I don't want to start the discusion again, is only my opinion.
Excuse me for shoot again.

[jmbeach]

I think admin has stated before that ARIN has set fairly strict rules that say he cannot deviate too far from his true business identity. It's a bummer for us resellers, but a reality nevertheless.

I think that for the random customer we may lose who finds out how much Matrix is charging us is worth the risk. Like you said dlrmartin, you are honest, as are probably 99% of us here. If our customers decide to leave because they want to start their own private label hosting, that's their choice.

old post re: ARIN and IP account name update - http://matrixwebhosting.net/forum/sh...highlight=ARIn

[dlrmartin]

If our customers decide to leave because they want to start their own private label hosting, that's their choice.

Yes I agree with you at all, but I don't want to be who say to customers : "Hey!! you can jump me and host from matrix for less money..."

I know too, that the random customer can't and don't want to do, but many others yes.

As I said later, I cannot start again with this discussion because of is hard. I'll no post again in this thread.

[antic]

Oh well, shame about the IPs.

I'm with you all, and want to make clear that it's not for any dishonest reason I raised this issue of masking Vortech. It's just the feeling of having to compete on price with Vortech's own direct hosting plans when people go and look at their site.

Normally I would WANT people looking at Vortech.com to show them the great DC they will be with. But then they'll see that Vortech also offer web hosting themselves, and suddenly we get labelled the "middle man" which is very bad.

As long as our shared hosting prices are not above Vortech's, clients may prefer support closer to home if given the choice. In this way it's almost like being "your friendly local Vortech representative".

If we are more expensive, even a little, then people are going to look at what's cheaper and no doubt notice the great support going on in these forums. Let's face it, people don't like to think they can't do it themselves and in many cases they'd be absolutely right (given patience and an active geek gene).

It's just an unnecessary extra hurdle when trying to market yourself. But I do believe you MUST be honest up front and say what kind of business you're running, because a) you should be proud of what you're doing and who your partners are, and b) if a client raises it later, they'll feel it was being hidden from them for some reason.

I just can't help thinking it would help a LOT if Vortech Inc., who owns the IP blocks and leases us space, was not also the same web site that provides shared web hosting.

Actually, I wouldn't mind being called a "Vortech Representative" which sounds like a *closer* point of contact with the source, rather than a "reseller" which sounds like it's one step removed.

[antic]

What confuses me actually is that the Vortech plans are beyond what resellers can compete with in terms of traffic - we can only offer a piece of 30 GB - say 5 GB per client, up to 6 clients, or 2 GB per client up to 15 clients.

Vortech plans offer 10 GB on the lowest plan! How do we compete with that, it doesn't seem fair.

I think resellers should get more traffic allowance so we can at least be on level ground with Vortech - they shouldn't be seen to undercut us. Buying "in bulk", should mean I can provide the same level of service for a bit less, right?

Personally I'd like to be open and say I'm a Vortech reseller, but how can I argue I'm better value for money?

Resellers take a lot of the support load off Vortech, as someone mentioned recently.. surely this is worth investing a bit more in us?

[Brangwyn]

Traffic is not based on allocation but usage so you could actually offer all your customers 20Gb if you wanted to.

Until the total used accross all your customers exceeds 30Gb you won't be charged any overages.

[antic]

Don't you think that's a bit dangerous? If a few of your clients get too active, what can you do but lose money with overage charges? All they have to do is start putting up vids or audio for visitors to download and traffic jumps a mile.

Many hosting providers used to shout "unlimited traffic" and suddenly found they couldn't keep their promises - it's not the right thing to do, if we're talking about being honest and open about the businesses we run.

[Brangwyn]

You really can't compare telling someone they have "unlimited traffic" and a plan with a solid cap on it.

So what if the traffic jumps and they use all of it ? you still know exactly where you stand as far as the maximum total cost even if they used all of their traffic, theres absolutely nothing dishonest about (unless you planned not to pay vortech for the overages, and they'd suspend you quick enough if you didnt) and as it stands as you yourself pointed out, unless you do oversell traffic your extremely limited in just how you can structure your plans and prices.

[antic]

Nothing dishonest in our case, since we can actually provide it, but it does mean we will lose money if enough clients decide to use the oversold traffic. A calculated risk that I still feel uncomfortable taking I guess.

But it's one of those situations where other people do it, and to look competitive you need to do it as well and hope for the best. As you say, we're very limited if we don't do it.

I wouldn't mind a Vortech management view on all this...

*raises hand*