A free sample plan

[clivejo]

Free Reseller program with free hosting plans... that has ABUSE written all over.

I totally understand about the abuse, and have seen it first hand with other providers. But surely there is a happy medium were the reseller takes on some of the 'vetting' of customers they sign up.

I understand you are not bothered by such things since you are a free reseller you don't deal with network degradation and server abuse.

On the contrary! I am bothered about abuse and network degradation if it affects myself or my customers! No matter how cheap you are if websites take forever to load and downtime is high, people will leave in droves.

In order for us to make all resellers work like freehostia which is entirely on another network and has its own servers altogether we would have to invest so much that we would not see return in the next 10 years at least. (Even if all the free users go to paid hosting and the ration is 1 to 100 of the free users going towards paid hosting services).
Which is also not your concern but it is what it is... deal with it.
I also want to get a free car with free gas for life but the best I can get is a free tank if I buy a brand new car...

Is there any way we as resellers could make use of that network? Could we maybe subscribe to it? For example, deposit $50 for 10 free accounts?

At the end of the day, we dont want to give away free accounts either! But we do want to showcase the services on offer and convert those to paid accounts. Well that's my goal anyway!

[yav0r]

There is a so called "bundle" idea of the Free Resellers packages much like the DNS cluster packages only with a lot more perks in motion.

I don't see why I should not suggest lets say 10 free accounts to be included in one of the bundles for example.

I am sure marketing is going to love the idea, but I don't see how we would run this through the actual chief of technical, but I will do my best.

I will keep you posted on that one.

[clivejo]

A slot based system would keep the incentive on resellers to 'upsell', both to get a commission and to free up a slot to offer to clients.

Maybe the number of slots could depend on the number of paid accounts you have? New resellers start off with one slot, and you get an additional slot for each paid account currently active?

Or maybe a deposit type system, were a deposit of $50 gets you 5 free account slots?

[BlackLightHost]

Even a time limited free trial would do the trick. Just something to be able to get potential clients into and using the hepsia panel rather than looking at something they can not use. Once they are in there and setup with a domain, it is easy for them to move into the premium plans. More importantly, it will be easier for them to move into our RSP plan than go elsewhere.

I understand you are not bothered by such things since you are a free reseller you don't deal with network degradation and server abuse.

With all due respect, your very wrong there. Resellers here are the ones placing their DBA names on the line when selling your product. It is our reputations that get ruined from poor services related to network degradation and server abuse. We most certainly are bothered with such things, especially if one has local clients they would like to bring to this platform.

You are right, it is what it is and we will deal with it, one way or another. Alot of us already offer free hosting from other providers alongside your product but its difficult converting them because of the different platforms. Just trying make suggestions to better the service for everyone and increase sales for ourselves and in turn, RSP and LN.

Yan, would you still buy that new car if the dealership didn't allow you to take a demo for a spin rather than just sit in it on the lot?

[yav0r]

It would definitely be based on a deposit system as well as a slot one.

I.e. you deposit lets say a specific amount of money per year for lets say 10 accounts.

The slot system would mean once an account gets upgraded to a paid hosting service you get 1 slot back to your total sum of free accounts available.

As for BlackLightHost trust me degrading our whole network is far more destructive for us than it is for your "name" or brand. As you are one reseller we house all resellers under our servers and our responsibility is much grater.
A name or brand is easy to replace where to replace a network is countless of hours for hundreds of people ( I would know that for a fact as we did migrate a datacetner recently).
Trust me if you own your own servers or network you will be less inclined to offer free hosting (at least after a month or two when you test it out :P). Everybody loves free hosting services as long as they don't have to manage them .
With all due respect I don't think you are grasping the full scale of the damage this can cause if not handled correctly.

[clivejo]

With all due respect, your very wrong there. Resellers here are the ones placing their DBA names on the line when selling your product. It is our reputations that get ruined from poor services related to network degradation and server abuse. We most certainly are bothered with such things, especially if one has local clients they would like to bring to this platform.

This is my problem! I prefer face to face, and tend to only deal with locals. They prefer this approach as most are put off with the overwhelming and shear overload of different web hosts out there. But while this mostly is a good idea, it very bad if your provider lets you down. The first thing they do is call or visit and shout at you directly! Too many times I have been let down by my chosen provider. I have also learned that putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good idea either!

To be fair and honest, RSP are the ONLY ones not to have let me down over the years.

[BlackLightHost]

This is my problem! I prefer face to face, and tend to only deal with locals. They prefer this approach as most are put off with the overwhelming and shear overload of different web hosts out there. But while this mostly is a good idea, it very bad if your provider lets you down. The first thing they do is call or visit and shout at you directly! Too many times I have been let down by my chosen provider. I have also learned that putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good idea either!

To be fair and honest, RSP are the ONLY ones not to have let me down over the years.

I have been there as well. I have not brought my local clients to RSP as of yet because of my past experiences with other reseller providers. I'm wanting to get a better idea of the services and business operations before bringing my face to face clients. I'm glad to hear that RSP has never let you down and it makes feel about about a future move.

[BlackLightHost]

It would definitely be based on a deposit system as well as a slot one.

I.e. you deposit lets say a specific amount of money per year for lets say 10 accounts.

The slot system would mean once an account gets upgraded to a paid hosting service you get 1 slot back to your total sum of free accounts available.

As for BlackLightHost trust me degrading our whole network is far more destructive for us than it is for your "name" or brand. As you are one reseller we house all resellers under our servers and our responsibility is much grater.
A name or brand is easy to replace where to replace a network is countless of hours for hundreds of people ( I would know that for a fact as we did migrate a datacetner recently).
Trust me if you own your own servers or network you will be less inclined to offer free hosting (at least after a month or two when you test it out :P). Everybody loves free hosting services as long as they don't have to manage them .
With all due respect I don't think you are grasping the full scale of the damage this can cause if not handled correctly.

Brands are not easy to replace,lol. Almost impossible to bring a brand name back to good once it's tarnished by a poor product and service. Been there and back. It's easier to start over.

Your probably right in that I'm not grasping the scale of this damage. I was always under the impression that these damages could be accounted for by low disk space, low bandwidth limits, small cpu limits, dbase limits, email limits and so on. The free provider I use now has these style limits in place so the free accounts can not use excess resources and degrade the network. The free accounts hit those limits and are unusable for a set period of time.

[yav0r]

That is why i said REPLACED as in start over not rebuild. I don't know how is replace even close to rebuild...

Considering a physhing website lets say for paypal is around a megabyte in total I don't see how ANY free hosting provider would prevent that from happening. And yes once such websites get reported their accounts are terminated immediately not even suspended but that does not help the network reputation at all considering they are thousands of hosts on a single IP.

[BlackLightHost]

That is why i said REPLACED as in start over not rebuild. I don't know how is replace even close to rebuild...

Considering a physhing website lets say for paypal is around a megabyte in total I don't see how ANY free hosting provider would prevent that from happening. And yes once such websites get reported their accounts are terminated immediately not even suspended but that does not help the network reputation at all considering they are thousands of hosts on a single IP.

Point taken with that example.

Would not a credit card verification discourage such things?

[yav0r]

We use payment processors which handle our transactions we don't collect credit card information ourselves.

That is why what you are describing is not possible.
1. I we do collect credit card information we would have to make each store PCI compliant. That would increase the wholesale prices tremendously and there is absolutely no point in doing for the sake of free hosting accounts.
2. Most of the people are turned off by being asked to enter their billing details for using a free service. (I for one think that kind of practice for scam... at lest in about 99.9% of the cases).
3. No it won't discourage the real scammers... remember they are in the business of stealing credit cards lol they will never use their own I should have probably put that as 1.

[BlackLightHost]

I'm out of ideas, lol. Status Quo it is then.