Free Hosting Request for free reseller program

[Asmar]

Hi There.
I saw that there is not any free plans for us to offer to our customer.
There should be a free plan so we can get more sales and users who uses free plan will upgrade their account to premium once they needed more resources for their websites. You may know about resellercluster they give us the ability to sell free hosting with their reseller program.
I am giving this suggestion for your free reseller hosting program and not the paid one..
I hope you'll follow this suggestion (if possible)

Best Regards.

[jkacp]

It does sound like a good idea, but you mentioned resellercluster. Have you read their terms of service completely.

"Domain registration service is available inside the reseller control panel [RCP] to help resellers make their hosting stores unique. Upon registering a domain name, the Reseller agrees that the domains registered may only be used for the purpose of reselling our hosting services. This means that domain cannot be trasfered to another provider, or used for anything else except reselling our services.

Reseller's commission are issued and paid on net-60 basis, between 10-15th day of the month [for instance commission for August will be paid between 10-15th of October]. Payment is reduced by $30 if payment method is bank wire transfer which the Reseller fully agrees to be collected from its commission. Commission is issued and paid if it is over $100."

INMHOP I don't think that I would go with a company that will not let you transfer your domain if you decide that they are not the ones for you. Also I am leary when it comes to companies that do not give you a basic pricing idea before you sign up. No place on their web site does it give you this information.

[Milen]

Asmar, ResellersPanel does not plan to offer free hosting plans under the free reseller program. This has already been discussed on the forum on several other occasions. Please, use the forum search tool to locate the relevant threads.

Upon registering a domain name, the Reseller agrees that the domains registered may only be used for the purpose of reselling our hosting services. This means that domain cannot be trasfered to another provider, or used for anything else except reselling our services.

I think that this is against the policies of domain registries and ICANN. As far as I know, domain registration service providers are not allowed to prevent clients from transferring their domains away from the registration service provider and ResellerCluster could get in trouble, if they try to do this.

Commission is issued and paid if it is over $100.

Our commission payment threshold is twice lower at USD 50.00 .

[Asmar]

Hello milen.
I'm never recommending resellercluster as they have many restrictions and problems...
I am just giving a suggestion to start a free plan so we can get more sales..

[darkeden]

Hello milen.
I'm never recommending resellercluster as they have many restrictions and problems...
I am just giving a suggestion to start a free plan so we can get more sales..

Like what exactly, Sure they have some issues that bug me but resellerspanel is one of the few free resellers.

Most people that need a free shared hosting plan are more likely to spam and or will use very little resources not needing to upgrade in the first place.

[jkacp]

Our commission payment threshold is twice lower at USD 50.00 .

Yes I know and that is one of the good things here.

I don't know how these places do it. Offering free web hosting is good but there has to be some sort of restrictions on it. (On my cPanel account I do have three accounts that are free but that is because of the non profit organization status. They did pay for a domain name.)
Even to offer free hosting in the hopes of getting them to sign up for paid is kind of iffy. On one other forum that I belong to, there are many people that talk about the horrors of free hosting and then there are some that swear by it. I just don't know. I do think that it is better to offer hosting monthly then to offer it free.

[wjleong]

just sign up an account with resellercluster to offer the free plan for your clients.

but don't offer the other 2 shared hosting plans as well as all other products from resellercluster. just simply free plan.

then when your clients need more resources and more advanced plan, get them to sign up in rsp. you help to move all your clients data from resellercluster server to rsp server, free or charge, as you like.

done. no need argue why rsp don't offer free plan.

how do you think ?

[The Loon]

I'd give relellercluster a miss, biggest reason is their site is out of date by 2 years, too many restrictions.

The free accounts are a good idea, but what is the ratio of free account sign-up's to those that upgrade to a paid account.

I spent years using free accounts, moving from one host to the next when they shut down or sold out. I have only been using a paid host for the last 5 years, 3 of them here for the sole purpose of selling more space.

[The Stealthy One]

Free hosting - paid hosting conversion is very hard to do. It has to be just so in order to work. In other words, it's often one or two obscure tweaks that open the upgrade floodgates. Further, it's often very hard to spur paid signups without annoying your existing userbase. And in that case, your free plan would be so lousy that no one would signup in the first place. I've unlocked far greater value in free hosting by offering it as a stand-alone service. Currently, this is the best way the free hosting business model works - with some monetization model other than upgrades to paid hosting.

Hope that info helps - I imagine reasons such as these together are a big part of the reason why RSP has not integrated free hosting into the free reseller program.

[Chameleon]

Im glad i read the rest of the thread before replying haha, i was sitting thinking "how does a free hosting account lead to more sales??" that said it is 3:20am where i am, so i'll put it down to tiredness.

As for free hosting, I am glad that RSP doesn't offer this. I don't know about free trial periods either (im still undecided as to whether they are a waste of saleable resource or could be a good way to drive sales) but in a way they have a 30 day free trial with the money back guarantee.

[vlasi47gr]

You cannot sell "free hosting". It is a contradiction in terms. You want to give away part of the resources of your account to others, you can. Just don't give them access to the control panel. Free to them, but not to you.