What Reseller Panel Needs to Be the Best Reseller Hosting Company

[cheatfusion]

I actually browsed many reseller hosting sites and even hosting sites for features and although Reseller Panel is very close with there unlimited resources, they need to improve a bit more for the resellers and their customers.

The main thing that I see with so many hosting companies is a FREE Hosting plan. I remember a time when I asked ResellerPanel for an unlimited disk space plan and they said it would never happen.

With plans as low as $3(wholesale) with features such as unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, etc,

I see no reason why we can not include a free plan. Now as an incentive for resellers to be able to provide this is make a restriction for this feature to only be available if the reseller has purchased a domain.

So with this free plan we can not offer a free domain which makes sense. But this would include a free sub domain with the reseller url (ex... sample.cheatfusionhosting.net)

Now with the free plan we need to discuss the features we will offer for the free plans I propose this:

Free Plan


FREE PLAN CONTENTS


Not Ad free

GUARANTEES:
Instant account activation
Pre-sale and After-sale Support
Support Response Guarantee 1 Hour
Uptime Guarantee 99.9 %
Weekly Data Backup
Free

BASIC FEATURES:
Disc Space 2GB -5 GB
Monthly Traffic 2GB-20GB
Domain Registration/Transfer (Domain Registration Retail)

CONTROL PANEL:
In-house Built Control Panel
Multi-lingual Interface (over 10 languages)
Colour Skins

DOMAINS & SUBDOMAINS:
Free Subdomain (sample.cheatfusionhosting.net)

WEBSITE CONTROLS: More Features
Advanced File Manager
FTP Accounts 1
FTP Manager

ADVANCED TOOLS More Features
Microsoft FrontPage Extensions
Dreamweaver MX Compatibility
PHP4/PHP5/PHP6 Support
MySQL v.5 Databases 1
MySQL Database Storage 100GB
phpMyAdmin Access

WEBSITE STATISTICS More Features
Webalizer Web/FTP Stats

OS, CONNECTIVITY AND BACK-UP
Stable Linux with Apache
2.5 Gbits Network Connectivity
UPS & diesel back-up generator

CUSTOMER SERVICE
Community Forum Support

PRICING
FREE


ACCOUNT FEATURES:
Free Account Set-up
Video Tutorials
Online Documentation

MARKETING TOOLS:
RSS Feeds
Popularity Check

I fully believe that offering a free plan will only help, by limiting the customer with features, they can then have the option to upgrade at anytime.

This will draw more customers and traffic.


Another features that we should at least offer for the resellers customers
With each hosting account we should add some Google Adword Credits to the account. I see many hosts with this added and have their plans at $3.99 a month so I know it is possible.

This feature will show how much we care about our customers by not only offering them amazing prices for the hosting accounts and at amazing prices, but we would also offer a Google Adword Credit.

Now for example he is how much we should offer with the default plans:
Starter -$25
Business- $50
Corporate - $75
Enterprise - $100

Here are some more marketing ideas for resellers for there customers

Access to Online Marketing Guides
Google Webmaster Tools
$50 Credit for Google AdWords
$25 Credit for Yahoo! Sponsored Search
$50 Credit for Facebook Advertising
Free Yellowpages.com Listing
60-Day Membership for RatePoint's Newsletter Manager

This will give the customer some free advertising just for choosing us (the reseller)

Improved Site Builder. The new site builder is currently not the good. Compared to many other user friendly site builders, we need to upgrade this site builder. Now we would only offer the site builder for the premium accounts (Paid accounts)

We need to also offer these features for our CGI/Databases

MySQL Databases
PostgreSQL Databases
CGI-BIN
CGI Library
PHP 5
Support for Custom PHP.INI Files
Perl 5
Python
Ruby/Ruby on Rails
MySQL 5 Database Server
PostgreSQL Database Server
Javascript Support
DHTML Support
Flash Support
Shockwave Support

Also I think it would be nice to add a link to let customers have the option for us to build their website. Here is an example:


Do you need help building your website and taking it to the next level? Get a custom built website designed by our industry experts. We take care of everything!

It's as easy as 1-2-3
Call 1 800-000-0000 to consult with our professional design team
Pay a one-time fee of $399
Get a professionally built website (up to 10 pages) in just a few days
What do you get?
Money in your pocket - A professionally designed website at fraction of the cost
Satisfaction Guarantee - Unlimited number of revisions within the first 30 Days
Peace of Mind - Edit, maintain or expand your site anytime with our popular tools

To learn more, call us for free at 1 800-000-0000
or Contact us via email


Check out this host that allows most of this all for $1.99 a month including a FREE domain name.
http://www.webhostingpad.com/hosting-features.html

So what are you thoughts on my suggestions? How about your ResellerPanel?
If you have some more features to add please do in a response.

I personally really like the way ResellerPanel is heading. I do not want to seem like I am putting Reseller Panel down, because I am not.

But with so many web hosting companies offering what we have and more cheaper, we need to think of ways to be competitive with the market.

Well let me know what you think.

[doneritehosting]

Interesting suggestions, obviously researched and very well put together as well. Waiting to see RP's opinion of this.

[Chris.Newton]

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestions.

1. Free accounts are a traphole for malicious users who would deploy their hacking tools and possibly harm the other accounts on the Server. Free accounts are very attractive for scammers and spammers that would use them to deploy their phishing sites. Offering free accounts cannot be limited to a certain target group - clients that do serious business always prefer to pay for the service instead of getting it free of charge. Regrettably, Reseller hosting is about the reseller being dependenant on the hosting company and not the opposite.

2. All suggestions about service improvements can be sent via the "send us your feedback" form in your reseller control panel's home page. Resellers can still offer their clients to build their web sites. Almost all of our most active resellers have customized reseller web sites that implement our remote forms. They also offer web design as a service. We are not planning on implementing that to the store templates as they are more of a limited starting point and cannot cover all reseller customizations one would require.

Regards,
Chris

[cheatfusion]

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestions.

1. Free accounts are a traphole for malicious users who would deploy their hacking tools and possibly harm the other accounts on the Server. Free accounts are very attractive for scammers and spammers that would use them to deploy their phishing sites. Offering free accounts cannot be limited to a certain target group - clients that do serious business always prefer to pay for the service instead of getting it free of charge. Regrettably, Reseller hosting is about the reseller being dependenant on the hosting company and not the opposite.

2. All suggestions about service improvements can be sent via the "send us your feedback" form in your reseller control panel's home page. Resellers can still offer their clients to build their web sites. Almost all of our most active resellers have customized reseller web sites that implement our remote forms. They also offer web design as a service. We are not planning on implementing that to the store templates as they are more of a limited starting point and cannot cover all reseller customizations one would require.

Regards,
Chris

I do see your point on the Free accounts. The main reason why I suggested this is because, when a customer views a webhost, they are really are forced to trust the hosting company to provide what they are showing that they offer, A host can say that they have an amazing website builder for example, no hidden fees, ect. By offering a free hosting account, this would gain trust of the potential customer to just give them a taste of how our web hosting platform really is. Now yes, some people would abuse this privilege, which is why free account should have be monitored by a team. I suggest offer a freelance job for resellers to form a group and monitor free websites for violating the terms of use. When they suspect a free account site violating the terms of use they can then report this in the forms or a support ticket. Thus limiting phishing. To add to this if we do see a customer that does break the law in that aspect, we can report them to the proper authorities.

I am currently asking some web hosts that currently offer Free Hosting and getting there response to better understand the free hosting reasons.

[doneritehosting]

I do see your point on the Free accounts. The main reason why I suggested this is because, when a customer views a webhost, they are really are forced to trust the hosting company to provide what they are showing that they offer, A host can say that they have an amazing website builder for example, no hidden fees, ect. By offering a free hosting account, this would gain trust of the potential customer to just give them a taste of how our web hosting platform really is. Now yes, some people would abuse this privilege, which is why free account should have be monitored by a team. I suggest offer a freelance job for resellers to form a group and monitor free websites for violating the terms of use. When they suspect a free account site violating the terms of use they can then report this in the forms or a support ticket. Thus limiting phishing. To add to this if we do see a customer that does break the law in that aspect, we can report them to the proper authorities.

I am currently asking some web hosts that currently offer Free Hosting and getting there response to better understand the free hosting reasons.

People abuse everything and making them pay for it does not stop it.... at all. If having a way to track members that abuse the free system will make it happen well have them produce a valid cc# for identification purposes at signup. I have a site that i have merged with rp's services and i pay a fee to give away free hosting plus the right to promote RP's services on that site.. tell the truth I'd be happy to see a free plan by RP... would even pay for it and move my site to rp's hosting..

My thoughts on the subject...

[iPhone]

Sorry - Im against the idea of free web hosting. Open to spam, scam and abuse.