[thelist] Need Hosting Reseller Recs

John Corry webshot at members.evolt.org
Thu Jan 2 21:00:02 CST 2003


> Hello everyone.
>
> I am going to move all of my webs to a reseller account in
> the next couple of weeks.  I host a couple of business sites
> and do a little web design and normally just host them under
> a sub-domain of my existing accounts but have decided to move
> up in the world.
>
> I am looking for recommendations for reseller providers.  My
> primary concerns are cost, tech support (need 24hour) and
> reliability.  I also need to run chron jobs nightly for
> specialized report running.  Let me know if yours is any good
> and anything in particular I should keep an eye out for when
> finding a provider.

My hosting experience has been something like this:
First, I realized I should get some kind of set up to host my client's
sites. I got a reseller account at hostcentric.com and paid $75/mo +
$2/domain. I then billed clients $20/month for hosting. It worked pretty
good at first and I made some money.

Then I started building db driven/script generated sites. My hosting
needs got a little more complex. I found myself hosting sites at
Hurricane Electric if I knew they would be db driven. The basic, no
frills, linux hosting from HE was way better and more reliable/secure
than hostcentric. It cost $10/month, I billed clients $30/month and made
money.

Then I tried to use Curl in some php apps to post data to authorize net
and get back a response string I could run through my scripts. It didn't
work. Tried to install Curl. That didn't work either. HE support's best
answer was 'sorry, we run this really obscure, customized version of
slackware and can't make curl work for you'. I was pissed.

I realized that hosting sites at HE was not positioning me for success.

By now I'm hosting 20+ domains.

I leased a Red Hat linux server at rackspace.com.

This was one of the best business moves I ever made.

They say they're 'fanatical about support'. They are. I'm in a position
to sysadmin my own server, I can log in as root and do *whatever* I
want. Know all those neat tutorials online where they say, 'just edit
httpd.conf...' and you can't because it's virtual hosting? Not me...I
can SSH to my server and VI any of my config files. This is tremendous
freedom. That alone eliminates 75% of my tech support tickets.

When I'm unsure about what to do, I call and talk to one of my support
team members. There are 9 people on my support team. I always speak to
one of them. We're getting to know each other. They never get annoyed
with me and they are teaching me how to run a secure, efficient Red Hat
server.

Rackspace.com ROCKS!

If you are thinking about making move to managed hosting, please let me
refer you to my sales rep. I'll get a small credit for referring your
business and you'll get the best hosting deal in the world.

Mahalo,
John Corry
Neon Cowboy Design
http://www.neoncowboy.com
mail : john at neoncowboy.com
phone : 808.572.8494





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