Transition or happy reselling?

[Chicken]

I was wondering, out of all that are here, how many resellers are planning on transitioning to their own servers, or are content with having someone else handle that side of things and will stay focused on sales and support (and continue reselling, no plans to get and control their own servers)?

If you are planning on switching to your own servers, are you planning on starting with fully managed servers? Are you busy learning how to run a server?

I'd also like to know if you are:

1) Thinking of starting to resell, or...
2) Thinking about moving from reselling to your own servers.

A couple people have mentioned something to me in another thread, but are there any others?

[Living Media]

I'm planning on switching, but it's probably not going to happen for a while. Not only do I need to build up my client base, I want to make sure that before I start managing my own servers, I have a solid grasp of what is needed on the server side: familiarity with the operating system, the various tools available, et cetera. When I do transfer over, I'll start with managed servers and then move to managing my own.

I'm also looking forward to being able to take the tax writeoff for equipment depreciation - so I'm looking for a client-owned managed option, if such an animal exists.

[Homeiss]

Well, when I moved from my reseller account to dedicated I wanted a semi or fully managed solution, so I could do my own thing but if problems arouse I would be able to get help. I am still learning things but I mean I can do a lot of things I couldn't before, I must say I started to learn most things when I got my own dedicated server.

I was thinking about reselling dedicated servers or even colo'ing my ow but I'm not at that stage yet. Still just growing and pondering what to do next. ;)

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Homeiss:

I must say I started to learn most things when I got my own dedicated server.
Yep, you can watch a whole bunch of videos and read books on driving cars, but you essentially just have to drive one to gain the experience, especially bad weather experience. This is why college classes are somewhat useless and why running a server will teach you more than buying a book.

[suppleSupport]

I have one reseller account with MCHost and about 7 servers of my own. Although I only have a few clients left on MCHost I DREAD every time one of those clients open a ticket because it takes a good 8 to 23 hours for MC to respond. You can do very little (basically nothing) without root. I think that if your host's support is good then a reseller account is okay, but if not it will drag down your support as well. Yesterday, for example, their server was down 4-5 hours and there was nothing I could do about it. They closed their forums as well as deleted everyone's helpdesk accounts and there were no status reports. This could've been avoided if it were my own server.

I'll be moving off all the clients on our reseller account to our own servers as soon as possible :|

[Chicken]

Originally posted by elevation:

They closed their forums as well as deleted everyone's helpdesk accounts and there were no status reports.
This was just during the outage (forums seem up now, though maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean)?

[suppleSupport]

Their forums were closed yesterday during the outage. Not down, closed. There was absolutely no way to get a hold of them. I even tried PM'ing Marc at WHT (he was online then) but he didn't reply :cry: It was SO frustrating!

[SaH]

I've been gearing up to get into Web Hosting, for over a year now. Doing a lot of reading, following people at the old home place (WHT), that seemingly spoke with authority on their business.

I am starting with a reseller account, and intend to market but very little to consumers outside of my local market (though I will welcome any business that comes my way).
If you are planning on switching to your own servers, are you planning on starting with fully managed servers?
I do plan to move to dedicated servers, but I don't have a set time frame as much as a pre-determined amount of monthly income.
Are you busy learning how to run a server?
I've bartered with a web host, doing some simple level one support work, for "UNIX The Complete Reference", a book put out by Osborne. As Chicken stated, you can read all the books and watch tons of videos, but there is nothing like getting your feet wet. I run a dual boot machine with WinXP and RedHat 7.3. Once I do make the transition to a dedicated box, I will most likely go with a fully managed solution. Only if it takes longer than I expect to meet the monthly income goal, will I go with less than a fully managed box.

Until the income goal is met, I will be perfectly content with a couple of resellers accounts, letting someone else handle the administration of the boxes. It will be enough to keep up with marketing, sales calls, proposals, support, billing, (on and on) + playing with RedHat while still reading as much as I can when I run into troubles with any aspect of Linux Administration... BTW, I certainly do not intend to get into the Windows market, for a long period of time. It isn't out of the question though, depends how deep the consumer's pockets run! ;)

[vito]

I have a small reseller plan where I host all my own sites plus a number of sites for local businesses. Personally, I am very content in leaving the hassles of sysadmin to my host. It allows me the time to grow my sites. This, of course, is provided you have a good solid reliable host. Which I do.

Besides, as mentioned by others, I think it's critical to develop good sysadmin skills before venturing on your own (I'm at the bottom of that learning curve). If I ever got to the point of considering my own box, I'd get one and put some non-critical sites of mine on it, and experiment for a while until I got familiar with it.

Vito

[Robert]

We were originally on a reseller and our original plan was to remain on a reseller account until VeroHost grew. However, we sat down and decided that eventually we'd have to move to a dedicated server, so why not start now? so we did and are happy!

[proxy]

We started out with a reseller plan but i didnt have 1 customer, i didnt think that my business had any real potential before i moved to dedicated and the transition wasnt exactly smooth at the start but profits quickly started pouring in.

[jvn]

Quite happy as a small local market reseller. I have managed to get my feet wet with a few local business sites and figure out which parts of the market I like.

"All that glitters is not gold" so to speak. After comparing the ups and downs of the hosting / reselling business, my choice is to revise the business plan and go for the part that appeals to me better. My hosting site revision (almost complete) will be geared to gain a few hosting clients while promoting advertising and other ventures.

[markblair]

Currently setup as a reseller and plan to stay that way for a long time. I wish I had the time to learn what is needed to manage my own but there isn't enough time in the day. I do hope to eventually run something one day that is above a reseller account but I'm happy the way it is right now. I have no need to mess with what is working plus the few sites I help manage won't help pay for the cost of going to a dedicated solution.

[JeremyV]

I skipped the reseller path altogether. I'm a control freak, and I hate being at someone elses mercy, so I just went out and started buying servers :D Although, I guess I could do that because I had some linux and server admin experience from the past, so it was a fairly easy transition.

But the biggest reason was forcasting projected growth and the hellish duty to move all of our accounts from a reseller to our own machines. I knew from experience that this is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and with large accounts it usually doesn't go very smoothly. So, I wanted to avoid that. Also, this allowed me to build servers of different specs to hold different types of accounts/features, and to really begin managing things right from the very first customer (again, you can see where the control freak comes into play).

I did the same thing with most of the other aspects of the business, dropped the cash on good billing software, pay for a decent control panel, get a merchant account, etc etc. With this setup, I could literally grow to hundreds of customers with little or no changing of servers, software, or billing methods. I just figured I would rather bite the initial ****** and pay more to get it all up and running right rather than always having to have little headaches down the road every few months as I outgrew what I started with. Time = money... so if you spend more money up front, you end up with more time. Or something like that :D

[101sales]

Same here - completely skipped the reseller part. I like to know that it's my server thats broken (if it does break) and that I know I can fix it. I'm already at the mercy of the DC bandwidth providers and Plesk - to be at the mercy of someone else's server was just too much. :D

[ghpickjr]

We switched to our own servers at about 150 accounts, our old host was great (www.intermedia.net) but they charged us incrementally per account, and we couldn't get them to come up with another arrangement. After we told them we were leaving, they tried to be accomodating, but we had already spent 6 months planning our own network and it was too late.

Being is reseller is nice, less stress, but owning is the way to go if you want serious growth and control.

[stew]

I have just started my own hosting company (well sort of in the middle of getting off the ground) and i am reselling just now but intend to upgrade to a dedicated server once I have a decent customer base so that i can at very least break even on a dedicated server.

[Karen]

I started reselling, then I went to a managed dedicated server. Now I have several servers, and I use in house server management. I don't do anything on the server personally (other than simply account maintanance), since I am not qualified, but also becuase I also don't find that it is a productive use of my time.

I strongly believe in delegating responsibilities to those who know it best. I am only one person, and I can not do everything myself.

Karen

[JeremyV]

Originally posted by Karen:

I strongly believe in delegating responsibilities to those who know it best. I am only one person, and I can not do everything myself.

Karen

That is about the best thing I've heard in a long time. People fail to realize that very rarely they can do everything, and do it well. As the cliche goes, "jack of all trades, master of none".

I think this is one of the main reason a lot of new businesses fail after their first year, even moreso in the hosting industry I think. People try to cut corners, save money, and try to do everything themselves, when infact, they may not know how to, or can easily be wasting many man hours just by saving a few dollars.

If you know your limits, and if you hire or get someone else to do the work that they could do better, you and your business will be a lot better off in most cases.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Chicken:


If you are planning on switching to your own servers, are you planning on starting with fully managed servers? Are you busy learning how to run a server?


We have thought of moving to our own server, but are not really big enough at the moment, and don't particularly want to run the server, even though we have a lot of sysad skills from previous jobs.

I would say managed at first for us. If a good hosting company offered reseller packages that could easily be transitioned into a managed server at a reasonable cost, I think that would be a good thing, and could set them apart from the crowd.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Carl:

If a good hosting company offered reseller packages that could easily be transitioned into a managed server at a reasonable cost, I think that would be a good thing...
IMHO, this is *key* when looking for reseller plans. Having a 'next step up' option is crucial and was one of the things I was concerned about when I was looking at reseller packages way back in the day.