Reseller Host That Will Do My Billing AND Let Me Set My Own$

Hello Everyone,

After searching the web and then this site using Google, I still have not been able to find a reseller website host that fits my needs.

With the risk of attracting SPAM, I am wondering if anyone can suggest a web hosting company (or companies) that has a partner or reseller program in which they do the billing for you? The trick here is that I want to be able to set my own prices per month, but have the hosting company keep their cost to me at a basic, fixed price.

We currently use GoDaddy.com for their reseller program, but we are limited to charging customers $9.95 per month, and we have some customers in which we would like to charge a lot more, but have our costs remain the same. Can anyone suggest a host(s?) that has automated billing and support for web hosting resellers and lets the reseller set their own pricing? Thanks in advance!

You can't find this kind of a host that manages your clients accounting! And you will never be able to find that forever too..
There is 2 simple option of reselling
1- Multi-Domain hosting plans
2- Afilliate systems

There several versions of this 2 reselling option however the thing that you are asking is meaningless to the nature of web hosting reselling.

Dolay,

WildWestDomains.com (a division of GoDaddy.com) bills our clients for us now. We are just stuck with their pricing structure. What would be meaningless in having a webhosting company do your backoffice billing and support for you? I don't understand your point.

I also think it a little strange to have your hosting company do your billing for you. I'll tell you why:

Hosting company sells reseller hosting to you lets say its $20 a month right

They bill you for $20 a month and they keep the $20 you pay

You sell a hosting plan from that space to a customer for say $15 a month

You bill your customer $15 - you keep the $15 they pay you

If your hosting company bills your customer $15 then legally - your customer they send it to is obligated to pay the money to them.

The other thing is - even if your hosting company sent out the bill on your behalf (under your name) who is responsible to do the chasing if they don't pay.... administration costs money for the time.

Also, in regard to reselling - you are responsible for support for your customers and your hosting company will provide you support if you cannot fix the problem, but they don't deal directly with your customer.

It defeats the whole point of reselling at a cheap price - you get the cheaper price because you do the majority of the work.

I'm curious as to why you wouldnt want to invoice your own customers?

Thank you for the feedback you guys.

In reading these posts, I guess what we have going with our hosting company is not the "norm" but that is exactly why we have them bill our customers, because they do the chasing AND provide technical support under a generic name - i.e., when my customer calls accounting, they just answer the phone as "accounting" and same for technical support. I have absolutely zero backroom (admin/support/collections) overhead.

I guess that my current hosting company has a different model in that they don't bill us for one "virtual server" at say $20.00 per month. Instead, they charge us a small flat rate for each customer (say $3.95 per month). They bill the customer up to a maximum of $9.95 each, keep their $3.95 and deposit $6.00 into our account - every month. I don't have the overhead expenses of billing, collections or support.

As you can see, my hosting company DOES do the billing for me and my customers DO pay them. The hosting company then pays me. I don't have to worry about any of the backroom headaches - no support issues, no collections issues, etc., etc.,

I started this thread with the assumption that there were many other hosting companies that operated like this and I just wanted to find another hosting company that would work on custom pricing with me (I want to charge more than the $9.95 per month that my current host limits me to). I didn't realize that this was an unusual business model.

However, I hope you do see why I like this hosting business model. I get to do what I'm good at (design and sell websites) and I let the hosting company do what they are good at (host websites, technical support, customer service, and collections).

Frank

Hi Frank,

Thanks for explaining a little more about what your doing. It sounds more like you are operating under a 'affiliate' scheme rather than a 'reseller'.

This is most likely why they will not be flexible in allowing you to charge a higher rate.

I really think you are going to be hard pushed to find someone to provide that service for you.

I'm still unsure as why you wouldnt be selling your website hosting packaged with the website you are designing, so when they pay for the whole package - you pay the hosting company/domain seller.

On the whole, support really isnt a huge issue if you offer your customers 24 hour email support. If its something you can't solve then you can contact your hosting company. Realistically this doesnt happen very often.

This is really the only viable way I can see you being able to charge a higher rate and have someone else do the billing (they bill you and you pay for the hosting out of your package deal money).

Hope that makes sense. Basically I think you will make more money from being a reseller of web hosting space than as an affiliate.

Cheers,
Rose