Do you setup accounts manually or automatically?

B

BlackStorm

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Do you setup your hosting accounts manually yourself or do you have them setup auto by a script?

Do you think its more secure setting up manually?
Do you think its too much hassle to setup each account manually so just do it automatically?
 
I set it up manually for now.. until I maybe buy ModernBill or something.. I'm not sure if it more secure, I would think so though because there is no way anyone can get your password or anything.

I don't think it is too much hassle to type in domain, user, pass and select their package :)
 
It could be more secure for abuse of accounts, for example if someone signed up and started spamming through their account if it was auto setup.
Im not sure if scripts setup the account without checking if the payment went through but if they didnt then a spammer could setup an account using fake info and start spamming before you find out which could be a big problem
 
I setup accounts manually and it can be frustrating at sometimes when you haev to setup more than a couple of accounts. I will be purchasing WHM Auto Pilot soon...so lets see how it goes :)
 
If you do it manually people might complain that the process takes to long which is not to good but doing it manually also has it's advantages.
 
If for example you host sites for free you might want to check that the site has already been created and then give them an account. The reason for this is that otherwise you will probably get loads of unused accounts. Something like this (as far as I know) can only be achieved by setting up the account manually.
 
<!--QuoteBegin-FastNetServers+Oct 19 2003, 06:07 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (FastNetServers @ Oct 19 2003, 06:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> What advantages would you think manual has over automated? [/b][/quote]
We allow for automatic setup through HSphere.

Problem with automatic setups, is its harder to catch fraud. We get aronnd this by setting our fraud filter with our merchant account "Really High", then manually run everything that doesnt go through smoothly.

Some still gets through though
 
I used to run a free hosting service. It lasted about 6-7 months then all hell broke loose as we had over 2,000 free sites and most were created from the asian population so we were unable to monitor content since it was in a different language.

However we used a script... can remember the name of it that allowed users to create accounts on the fly. It also had some security features built into it which were rather nice. It had..

1 ) Email confirmation on creation of the account
2 ) Account dupe checking
3 ) If the site received less then _blah_ hits per month it would delete it
plus a bunch of other options in the config script.

As is stands in business Im with now... we continue to setup accounts manually. We feel it is more secure for our users because of credit card fraud. Any user that uses a credit card on our site we call the number they provided for voice verification.

Also with manual creation of the account you actually set it up... So you can remember people and make it more of a relationship with your clients, which a lot of clients will like.

As for people that want their account created on the fly..... why??? As long as its done within a timely manor. But if they want on the fly, and if it is an absolute emergency to get a site... call the damn web hosts number :)
 
<!--QuoteBegin-John Diver+Oct 19 2003, 09:36 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (John Diver @ Oct 19 2003, 09:36 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Do you setup your hosting accounts manually yourself or do you have them setup auto by a script?

Do you think its more secure setting up manually?
Do you think its too much hassle to setup each account manually so just do it automatically? [/b][/quote]
I got both manuel & automatically. Manual on the server & automatically on the hosting client
 
Also with manual creation of the account you actually set it up... So you can remember people and make it more of a relationship with your clients, which a lot of clients will like.
Click to expand...

I agree Jonathan. I have a lot of clients that comment on how important the relationship is. Not only do you get a relationship with the customer but IMO they are less likely to leave if you have that good repor with them (everything else being equal).
 
The ONLY times I've been ripped off, have been through automagic setups.

I've also noticed that the worst pains in my ass are always the ones who sign up auotmatically.

We now set up all of our accounts manually, this does a couple of things:

1. You are right, it gives one the chance to develop a little bit of a relationship.

2. It allows us the opportunity to really define what the customer needs - frankly almost none of our customers use our "stock" plans. My wife has a saying "It's about the hole" meaning, when you go into a hardware store to buy a drillbit, you don't really want a drillbit, you want a hole. It's up to us to find the customer's hole. So we try to use the time we have with the potential customer to make sure they get the package they actually need.

3. It offers us the chance to explain our TOS to potential customers. I'm amazed by how few people actually take the time to read a TOS - even one as simple to understand as ours.

John
 
Everything is done manually. I personally don't do it though. ;)

I don't like using scripts such as ModernBill and WHMAutoPilot to automatically create the hosting account and so on. Yes, it can save time - however I just prefer it if I have my employees do it.


Currently I don't use an online billing system, however do plan to in the future, yet don't think I'll ever have accounts created automatically. I've employees who are more than willing to do it, and also as said already, it can create better relations with clients.

The clients shouldn't be cross, or annoyed that the account has taken some time to be created. At least then they're guaranteed (or hopefully should be) that it was done correctly. All accounts are created, by my employees, within twelve to twenty-four hours; I don't think it's too long as sometimes employees have to call up the clients and confirm things. Also at times clients wish to have things specially done to their accounts (such as having a script installed), which means more time is taken to create the account and actually make sure that the script which has been installed is working perfectly without problems (There's no point installing a script, yet it doesn't work!).

If I were the client, I personally wouldn't mind waiting twenty-four hours to have my account setup - true, it's a whole day (twelve hour day & twelve hour night), but as long as everything is setup as I requested, I wouldn't have a problem at all.
 
As a client, I really wouldn't mind waiting.
I would actually respect the host a lot more for taking the time to do it manually.
Having automatic account setup really isn't that good a benefit to a customer.
At most 24hours isn't too bad.

I think it would be a problem though if they took a while to setup the account and there were no problems, I.E. problems with fraud checking.
 
At most 24hours isn't too bad.
Click to expand...
I'm sure the majority of places take much less than twenty-four hours to setup an account, however it will take a bit longer if the client requests that a special script is installed or something like that. Although, again, it may take a bit longer to setup the account if you have a lot of backlog - I remember one webhost had a lot of backlog for setting up accounts and responding to support tickets, and it took them a long time to sort it out all and get everything in order.
 
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