I've flirted the the idea of moving my domains to HMS for a good few months now. I'm closer to doing it than i am a few months ago (in fact very close, had it with my exiting host)... and i'm looking for some tips from others who have set up reseller accounts.

First off, my current sitation is like this.. i'm paying like £58 ($108) a month for a reseller account. for that i get like 50gb data transfer and 4gb HDD. I can break it down and resell as i see fit.. i configure the hosting plans, create custom control panel, bill clients and all that. The good thing about this is i can set up my own smaller (personal) websites without having to pay separately for it.

From what i've seen here at HMS, there are two options.. go for a reseller a/c or a VPS. VPS sounds like a lot more involved than just a straight reseller account - but it's closest to what i'm used to, however i'm not sure i want to be billing clients directly. what would you recommend.

My other dilemna is my clients hosting plans all expire at various times of the year. I'm guessing the best time to transfer is when their hosting expires but of course that means i'll be spending more (2 reseller accounts set up). What has been your experience in moving clients?

Can you offer me any advice? I've been building sites for a while now but i've never had to do a massive move... what really scares me is this my biggest site i'm currently hosting which is running about 8 database applications...

Thanks all!

Choosing HostMySite is definitely the right choice. I am currently a reseller. I also moved all of my clients away from another provider, (which I was also a reseller at). I needed a host that provided ColdFusion support, since that was my strongest programming language, and that’s what my biggest client required. I debated between two hosting companies. HostMySite and another company.

With my previous company if you had a problem, and were a reseller, you had to talk to their "Reseller Support” which took you through a jungle of phone options only to be on hold for 15 minutes, and then find out their "Reseller Support” is only open M-F 9am-5pm

So I took ALL of my reseller accounts and moved them over to HMS. When I called HostMySite for information and they picked up on the first ring, I was sold.

I seriously will not even register a domain name at a company that sells them for 2.95 when I know I can pay the $12 and have unprecedented support at any time day or night

As far a reseller accounts go, I think HMS offers excellent discounts at 30% off the list price, and $16.95 setup fees. You can make a pretty good profit on the higher end accounts (ColdFusion and .net accounts). However, you don’t receive discounts on Domain names, virtual private servers (VPS’s) or dedicated servers.

HMS has a good control panel that lets you manage all of your clients and billing information. It doesn’t have the reseller tools that some other companies have, but their support makes up for it. And HMS is always adding improvements. I would look through HMS’s Control Panel articles and get a feel for it HERE .

Just keep in mind; you need to have 10 accounts within the first year to hold your reseller status.

Moving Accounts

I took all of my personal accounts, and moved them as soon as I became a reseller and just let them sit abandoned at the other host until they expired. When my client’s sites expired, I would move them 1 month before time. I would also highly recommend transferring your domain to HMS (a full registrar transfer and not just the DNS servers) so you have everything managed in one central location.

VPS

As far as the VPS go, if you want to stick with reselling the way you know, a Windows VPS might be the way to go. You can get 20gigs, ColdFusion, MSSQL, .Net (MySQL & PHP if you install it yourself) for $199 monthly. (However, you can’t expand or upgrade past 20gigs. That is the max) that’s what I have and I love it. I choose to manage it myself via Terminal Services since that’s what I like. However, you can have Plesk installed during setup and that will give you the ability for create client accounts automatically, and give them a way to manage their accounts. Other wise, you have to use Terminal Services (Remote Desktop), and do manual setup of your accounts. And you absolutely do not want to give clients root access to your server via TS. That’s where Plesk comes in handy. They can manage their website, domain settings, (or whatever else you give them access to) by themselves.

I hope this helps a little bit. If I missed anything, please let me know and I’ll try to clarify for you.

Thanks, it helps a bit.

you mention:

---
I took all of my personal accounts, and moved them as soon as I became a reseller and just let them sit abandoned at the other host until they expired. When my client?s sites expired, I would move them 1 month before time.
---

That statement is not very clear.

Do you know if VPS base supports Access databases?

Thanks for the information... i don't know why i don't just sign up.. i think its the fear of the unknown..

What I meant was, I was so anxious to move my sites to HMS, i just signed up for the new accoutns at HMS, transfered the domain names, and just let the acounts at my other host expire. basically since I transfered the domain name, the account was just sitting there not being used.



You have full admin access to the Windows VPS. You can install and run whatever you feel the need to. You get MSSQL 2005 with every account, so you are better off using that than Access. Using an Access Database can really slow down your application. It's really not not that secure.



HostMySite has a 30 day money back guarantee. You really have nothing to loose to try it. [/quote]

I definetly know what you are saying about the unknown. I had endless problems at my previous host, and when I left, I was a little worried about where to go. I found HMS on the Macromedia CF Hosting partners page, and decided to check them out. Astonished at the possibility of a host that had barely any negative reviews despite searching pages and pages, a host that was the highest ranked on Ben Forta's CF page, and one that had 0 hold support, I called them up. I explained my problems, and sure enough, they knew about how to solve even the most odd of them such as IIS interfering with Flash Remoting. Because I too check out every host, I called them about 15 times before I signed up, but now I'm unswitchable. I have used their CF plans, their Ruby on Rails plans, and a Windows VPS, which has solid 100% uptime. I also know like Jason said that they have a great reseller program, although I am not one. I know you can customize the control panel and other things for them. At HMS, reselling is a bit different. From what I hear, you get the plans at a discount, sell them normal price. Although you could also use a VPS as Jason said. With VPS, anything already installed, they support, so between that and Plesk, VPSs are pretty easy to manage. Personally, i just enjoy getting a month free on my hosting for every person I refer. An lastly, I'd like to mention that to this day, I have never waited longer than 20 seconds for someone to pick up, and that was when 50 people were calling at the same time.

Just had a thought...

Could i for instance move all my domains and recreate them under a VPS plan? I'd still be paying less monthly..

and then.. move those accounts to reseller accounts when they expire.. could that be an option? I hope administering VPS won't be too difficult... even though i'd love to get in there!

You surely could. I wouldn't transfer the domains though until the accounts expire, and you get shared accounts becuase then you will get the domain or transfer for free. What you will need to do, is point your domain's name servers to HMS name servers . You will need to let HMS support know you are adding a domain so they can add the domain to your account so you can manage it...I'm not 100% sure if there is a fee. They might still consider it a "Transfer" I would check with them first.

Keep in mind though, on the VPS's you only get 1 IP address. So each site will be using the same IP.

Try to learn about administering a VPS without plesk to see if that will suite you
Windows VPS Support Articles.

Dedicated Support Articles also will give you some help as well since a VPS is similar to a private server. (Software Wise)

you can pay 1$ a month extra for every additional IP I believe, and if you order enough, you could probably work out some deal to get it for less.

Ooops Indeed! I should have mentioned that. I'm slacking!

Ok... so... just to clarify...

is there a limit to the amount of accounts(websites) i can host? When you say only one ip... that doesn't trasfer to one website would it? What would be the advantage of all accounts having their own IP? Sorry... bit of inexperience there...

I'm getting close.. i had actually clicked the sign up button before i decided to come ask these questions..

Didn't mean to confuse you on the IP thing.

With VPS Accounts, you can host all the websites you would like. Basically, when you are using 1 IP address, you just setup all your websites in IIS to use the same IP address.

The only time you'd want another different IP address is to segregate traffic. So say you have a site that gets 100,000 hits a day, and a site that only get 100 hits both using the same IP. The larger site will hog all the bandwidth from that IP, and slow down the smaller site.

That’s when you would need another IP.

I have a Win VPS as well. If you ever need some help with setup, questions etc., Just let me know. I'd be happy to help.

Now click that signup button!!!

P.S. Which VPS account were you thinking about getting (Just out of curiousity )

Forgot to clear this up...

NO. When you setup your websites in IIS properly, IIS looks at the domain name you entered through IIS, and the one requested by the user. It then directs the user to the proper directory that holds the files for that domain.

The base to start with... and no more than 10 sites.

Thanks for all the info.. you've been very helpful.. they should give you a job around here

Well.. i did sign up but seems i ended up by set up on the wrong package and billed for a year, rather than quarterly. Not blaming HMS for this but I don't know how it happened. Only thing i can think of is i had 2 windows open when i was comparing the two packages and to think i would sign up to get charged for the year rather than 3 months without noticing is strange and a first for me.

I told them of this and requested the necessary changes made but no response yet since this afternoon. Just sent them another email.

I wouldn't worry about it. They are very good at getting things straightened out. They never give a hassle.

This is your Official welcome to HostMySite!