Recent Downtimes Hostgator, Bluehost and others

[doneritehosting]

Its a pity that we cannot or do not offer any of the following at this time....

Free trial,
Monthly billing,
Coupon system is not in place yet..

Customers are migrating from these companies in droves right now due to excessive downtimes and / or acquisition by EIG, most customers migrating from these companies have been loyal to them average 6+ years... Now would be the time for a Google or Bing ad campaign with aggressive marketing features in place.

Just do a google search on HG's recent downtime you will be able to read about it and the 4 top contender hosting companies affected.. be sure to read the threads from webhostingtalk, the warrior forums and thewhir. You will also run up on random comments of "Resellerspanel being an alternate hosting solution but they only offer annual billing" if you research long enough. **hint** LOL!

This situation going on with these companies right now is the main reason why lots of seasoned internet marketers and businesses steer away from annual billing with hosting companies or resellers until they are comfortable with the reliability of the services... and these people migrating from these companies are going for Non EIG owned hosting services and for sure will be testing alternate hosting services with at least a monthly hosting term, I would myself after being burned like those people but hey, i'm just a hillbilly and my IQ is only 1... (I'm not brilliant, Ok? LOL) but someone brilliant ought to be able to see the logic and marketing opportunity in this.

Example,

wholesale dedicated server 1 month = $110.00
Wholesale Enterprise plan 1 year = $120.00

You can actually hands on test drive our dedicated servers at a cheaper out of pocket expense for 1 month than our top of the line shared hosting!

Just my opinions on a current hot topic and interested in hearing other opinions

Have a great day!

[Nova-Host]

I agree 100 percent with you, donerite. I've seen some of those comments and threads myself, though not to the extend you have. I, like you, still find it's a pity that we cannot offer free trials, monthly billing, or the coupon system that has been LONG promised for going on I believe two years now. Not too long ago (no more than 4 months ago, I think) I remember being told there'd be good news on that very feature in the next couple of weeks. Well, that time has surely come and gone and we've heard nothing but the static and general response of "we'll get back to you when there is any news to report". To be honest, RSP has been slacking of late. Not that they are getting worse, they're still the best out there today, but they could be doing better by us resellers and sadly they don't appear to be doing that, even though they are trying. As Donerite said, I'm not brilliant myself, and I have no idea what my IQ is (I've never bothered to find out), but it's becoming really obvious to even those who live under a rock that things aren't progressing as they should. I only wish RSP management saw things mine and donerite's way. Some do, but they aren't high enough in the management to get things moving. At least they are trying, though, and that's what counts. Anyway, that's my two cents. Anyone else have any opinions on this?

[doneritehosting]

Well said Nova.. Although there have been massive innovations to the actual services side of things, this is one of the best hosting services I have ever seen, hardly any actual marketing innovations have been made to the free reseller program... sure the new unlimited cpanel reseller plans are very attractive with the profit margin possibilities and that is an alternative but.... I'm a hespia fanatic.... Love the logic and simplicity of this control panel... I'm way above the free reseller program ideals far as money spent per month, I'm just looking for the marketing tools to sell it... hespia is way better than cpanel far as I'm concerned but you have to match what people are willing to spend to try something new.. if joe blow 1 listing below me in google is offering 1 free month hosting using cpanel (established standard), who in their right mind is going to spend $120 (wholesale) out of pocket to hands on test drive hespia (something new) ?

[Nova-Host]

I agree completely, donerite. There needs to be a free trail account option. Of course, we can't make it a free trial account that lasts forever. We'd have to limit it to, say, 15 days or something like that. It cant be too long a time or too short, and 15 days is right in the middle, a perfect option. Now of course, the reseller should be able to choose how long this free account lasts for before closing, and if the reseller wants it to last 7, 10, 30 days, or even forever, then the reseller should have the option to set it to those options. Now say a reseller has a free account plan, which of course will have VERY limited features (it is FREE, after all, so the client shouldn't be expecting the royal treatment, LOL), for lets say 10 days. As soon as the client signs up for this free accouint plan. The client is informed that the account is active for ten days, and ten days only. One to three days before the free account expires, the client gets a notification that he can either upgrade to a paid plan with more space and bandwidth and whatnot, or he/she can choose not to upgrade his/her free account and the account becomes inactive. Of course, months down the road if the cleint decided to reactivate their free account and turn it into a paid account, they can still do so, as resellers will have saved their CP the client's account info. Not at all a bad system. This, coupled with a monthly billing option, would be AMAZING. The coupon system, which we are getting soon, would be a big added bonus.

[doneritehosting]

Not forever, 30 days duration.... thats enough... 30 day trial circumventing the 30 day MBG. Easy enough to implement with the current service guarantees without alot of hassle on rsp's end. If credit card and phone verification is performed on trial accounts, that will detour spam sites the same as verification does right now..

[doneritehosting]

There does not even have to be a trial option, for example, my starter plan retails $4.95 /mo annual billing $59.40 with 30 day MBG... If I could market it with true monthly billing @ $6.99 monthly upfront along with a discount for annual purchases with free domain at $60 upfront annual it would be easier to market.... You are talking a mcdonalds value meal lunch for work one day verses the cost of groceries for the household one week tied up at least 2 weeks in electronic bs if you want a refund... there is a BIG difference with that senerio in the investments to try the service.. plus consumers would already be going out on a limb for a new "company" with no reputation, a $6.99 loss for one months hosting is easier to swallow than a $60 annual fee loss to the consumer before typing in the trusty credit card # or using paypal....

[Nova-Host]

I agree with you 100 percent, donerite.

[Nova-Host]

Am I the only one that's NOT surprised that RSP seems to have nothing to say here?

[clivejo]

The topic has been discussed many times and RSP have never engaged in the discussion. It must not be compatible with their business model/plan, but they must have their reasons for not offering it. Regarding the monthly billing, this could be achieved via your own custom billing platform. RSP have already stated that if a customer cancelled within the billing period they could refund the remaining amount to your wallet or add it to another plan.

After thinking about introducing monthly billing myself and trying it on other platform, I dont think its a good idea. There is just too much work involved in chasing payments, suspending/resuming accounts etc I pay monthly for my VPS plans and I'm continuously forgetting to renew it, despite numerous reminders and popups I always seem to leave it to the last minute! Of course this is purely my personal opinion on the matter.

[doneritehosting]

You dont have recurring billing on your VPS clivejo? Mine was set on monthly subscription when ordered and I have to more not forget the payments coming out and spend it lol.

[Host Perk]

Agree 100%, having a yearly billing system for the shared hosting packages are extremely hard to sell. Not everyone is going to put up 40$ upfront if they haven't even heard of the company. Im sure if we could sell monthly, Resellers Panel resellers will grow extremely fast.

[Nova-Host]

Well good luck getting RSP to bother to even look at this thread. We (donerite, myself, clivejo and a few others) have been trying for years to get RSP to listen on this front and haven't gotten anywhere with monthly billing (though we're told a sort of coupon system feature is coming at some point in the future). Heck, they haven't even bothered to show an inkling of interest in this thread, so that should tell you something right off the bat.

It's too bad really, because RSP would be the top dog company if they'd let their resellers do monthly billing. They're doing it themselves through nchosting.com, so why not spread the love and share the monthly billing feature that site uses with the rest of us? Sadly, no matter how many times the issue is brought up, we resellers get a negative response, and this time RSP has chosen to give is NO response, which as a long time reseller, I find extremely disappointing.

There's another option out there (I won't mention the name of this option publicly because I may or may not be banned for doing so, so PM me if you want to know about it), but that option doesn't provide monthly billing either (though they do offer 3 month billing, which is appealing to some).

[doneritehosting]

Nova is correct about this other company, they do have a more aggressive marketing platform in place for the reseller. However RSP is well beyond light years ahead of them with their hosting platform, client support and control panel.

This other company also only offers 2 ready to go reseller hosting themes but provisions for custom reseller sites with premium hosting are available, but there again RSP far outstrips them in this area by providing a free custom hosting plan if you purchase a DNS cluster for wordpress reseller themes...

This other company operates out of 1 datacenter, in Germany I believe, RSP operates out of 3..

I prefer RSP, their hosting service and tech support ranks somewhere in the top ten providers (big plus!) its just the marketing platform for shared hosting that lags behind somewhat... The coupon system is supposed to be released with the new ready to go hosting templates if I remember correctly.... hopefully in the next couple of months...

One big plus and a big thumbs up for RSP's support is its not used for up selling like other companies are guilty of. Not once in the ten years I have had a account with RSP have they tried to upsell me a new domain or more expensive services. Its a great relief to know when you have to file a support ticket that its all about solving your problem, not trying to make more money off of your problem before its solved....

[Nova-Host]

Again, donerite, you and I are perfectly in sync here, LOL! I just wish RSP would stop ignoring their resellers on this issue. Sure they might be a little annoyed that we keep bringing it up, but if I were RSP, and my resellers kept bringing this issue up, I'd be having a really big think about it. It's sad that RSP is apparently not listening here. Still, I don't plan to leave because RSP are still in the top ten where support and services are concerned, and that is probably literally the only reason keeping me here. If only the'd listen to us and institute a monthly billing option, which both donerite and I KNOW can be done, as we've both seen some of RSP's test websites that do just that.

[clivejo]

I visited that website and tried to "purchase" a monthly plan but I cant, it will only allow me to pay annually. Also, that site is saying there is a data centre in Sweden, which was dropped quite a while ago!