Lowering Operating Costs

H

Hostrica

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My business partner and I are considering reselling hosting service to interested clients. As of now we just do shared and VPS hosting. The shared is growing pretty well. We want to try out reselling.

I know that you can get things cheaper with certain qualifiers. For example, cheaper WHMCS licenses. How might we go about asking vendors for lower costs? Any advice would be appreciated.

We have factored in the obvious costs like servers, WHMCS licenses, SSL's, etc. Is there anything we might be overlooking in deciding to offer these services?
 
Hostrica said:
My business partner and I are considering reselling hosting service to interested clients. As of now we just do shared and VPS hosting. The shared is growing pretty well. We want to try out reselling.

I know that you can get things cheaper with certain qualifiers. For example, cheaper WHMCS licenses. How might we go about asking vendors for lower costs? Any advice would be appreciated.

We have factored in the obvious costs like servers, WHMCS licenses, SSL's, etc. Is there anything we might be overlooking in deciding to offer these services?
Click to expand...

For your cheaper licenses question, often times any vendors that does allow reselling will have a minimal quota that you need to meet. Either expressed in xyz amount of licenses or spending xyz amount on the vendor's site. Either one are usually expressed in per month cycle.

As for the expenses advice, don't forget to factor in for instance processing fees and support fees if your outsourcing/employing people to do support for you.
 
Hostrica said:
My business partner and I are considering reselling hosting service to interested clients. As of now we just do shared and VPS hosting. The shared is growing pretty well. We want to try out reselling.

I know that you can get things cheaper with certain qualifiers. For example, cheaper WHMCS licenses. How might we go about asking vendors for lower costs? Any advice would be appreciated.

We have factored in the obvious costs like servers, WHMCS licenses, SSL's, etc. Is there anything we might be overlooking in deciding to offer these services?
Click to expand...

You could re-sell VPS from other providers to keep the costs low, and sell hosting and reseller accounts that way you only need one control panel, and one VPS to manage them thus cutting the costs down. If you charge a premium rate you could offer other extras like free licenses and ssls, you can buy them from external providers if you don't meet the vendors requirements.
 
If you want to have WHMCS then you have only 2 options

1) purchase a licence direct from them $19
2) find a VPS provider than offers WHMCS licences

you can no longer buy a WHMCS externally to use on any server

but if you look on offers page of WHT you can get a VPS with WHMCS for $30 - $50
 
Keep in mind too, the more you grow, the more customers you will need to support.

Do you handle your own server management and help desk support? These days, slow or poor quality support is a very common reason for complaints. IMO, providing your customers with top-notch support is more important then low prices and a wide service offering.
 
easyhostmedia said:
If you want to have WHMCS then you have only 2 options

1) purchase a licence direct from them $19
2) find a VPS provider than offers WHMCS licences

you can no longer buy a WHMCS externally to use on any server

but if you look on offers page of WHT you can get a VPS with WHMCS for $30 - $50
Click to expand...

Interesting didn't know that, as any other licenses are able to be brough externally from resellers. Does WHMCS does not have a reseller program outside of having to HAVE it included within a hosting plan of some sort?
 
Harv45 said:
Interesting didn't know that, as any other licenses are able to be brough externally from resellers. Does WHMCS does not have a reseller program outside of having to HAVE it included within a hosting plan of some sort?
Click to expand...

WHMCS used to have a distribution program where you could get licence from buycpanel, licencepal etc, but this was closed a few years back.
their reseller program is still going, but a reseller can only sell/provide a licence to their own clients hosting on their networks, you cant buy a licence and then use it elsewhere unless you get it direct from WHMCS
 
It would be better if you search for a complete package of a cheap dedicated server with CPanel/WHM license. This will save you costs and resell them to interested clients. You can also offer bulk orders to your web hosts, which will help lower costs on the servers.
 
RH-Calvin said:
It would be better if you search for a complete package of a cheap dedicated server with CPanel/WHM license. This will save you costs and resell them to interested clients. You can also offer bulk orders to your web hosts, which will help lower costs on the servers.
Click to expand...

But if he wants WHMCS he would need to find one that can offer a WHMCS licence otherwise he would have to get a licence direct. but all depends what he wants
I recommend Big Scoots. Justin and Scott are available 24/7 and support is answered within minutes

https://www.bigscoots.com/managed-vps
https://www.bigscoots.com/hybrid-hosting
https://www.bigscoots.com/managed-dedicated

I am sure they also can provide WHMCS licence
 
I appreciate all the help folks, just sitting back here taking notes :)

I know there is a way to make our entrance into reselling work and go more smoothly and you all are helping greatly.

We are aware that there are other billing / reselling solutions that exist aside from WHMCS / cPanel & WHM as well. But I think we can all agree they are easily the most popular and widespread (hence the thread / request).

In the end getting the right combination of licenses from the right sources is what will help us lower our costs. Always searching for that perfect combination... Off to crunch some numbers

Much appreciated!
 
well cPane/WHM is the most common used, but for billing Clientexec is just as good as WHMCS, but does not have as many modules to ease automation.
 
Hostrica said:
My business partner and I are considering reselling hosting service to interested clients. As of now we just do shared and VPS hosting. The shared is growing pretty well. We want to try out reselling.

I know that you can get things cheaper with certain qualifiers. For example, cheaper WHMCS licenses. How might we go about asking vendors for lower costs? Any advice would be appreciated.

We have factored in the obvious costs like servers, WHMCS licenses, SSL's, etc. Is there anything we might be overlooking in deciding to offer these services?
Click to expand...

I was kind opf hoping your company was in Costa Rica (from the name) I love it there. You can get a free WHMCS from some hosts if you pay for several months at once. I chose to buy it from them because I know it's safe there and the support is for us.

As for CPanel they have a lot of partners, I think we are on the lowest pricing cycle there and it's $9 a month for VPS and $25 for a server license. Anything less than that and the host is eating a little for your business which is pretty common.

As for App installers I use Installation and it lowers each license you add. After 30 servers it's like $3 a month. Super cheap and awesome software.

Reseller plans have many factors, for us you get three months free if you pay for 9. This brings down to like $8 a month. Pretty cheap for quality hosting with 24/7 support. I wouldn't try to do anything much cheaper and expect a good experience.
 
I agree with most answers here. If you are new to the reselling start with someone that can give you the complete package. As you grow you can start getting your own licenses for what you want to supply, most all licenses can be upgraded to a new server or ip.
 
There are a lot of costs that go into this sort of thing. There is no way to get cheaper WHMCS licenses, unless you join their reseller program, which I believe you have to have a total of like 10-15 licenses or something like that active in order to join that program. Otherwise, you can resell services from another company that bundles WHMCS for it, but then you run into a 'service quality issue'. Like how reliable is that company, do they have an uptime guarantee? Do they honor their uptime guarantee like they say they do? Is their support responsive if you need them for something quickly? What kind of support do they offer; phone, live chat, email; skype, etc.? There are a lot of questions to ask yourself or to ask the provider for which you are wanting to do business with.

When you are dealing with licenses, there are all sorts of fees... WHMCS, cPanel/WHM, the server, Softaculous, and any other software, such as JetBackup, Zamfoo, WHMReseller, etc. You can get cPanel/WHM licenses for $14.95/mo for VPS machines, Softaculous is about $2.00/mo and then all other software pricing varies.

Hope this helps, have a great day.

Have questions about WHMCS? Visit whmcs.com

-Larry


Hostrica said:
My business partner and I are considering reselling hosting service to interested clients. As of now we just do shared and VPS hosting. The shared is growing pretty well. We want to try out reselling.

I know that you can get things cheaper with certain qualifiers. For example, cheaper WHMCS licenses. How might we go about asking vendors for lower costs? Any advice would be appreciated.

We have factored in the obvious costs like servers, WHMCS licenses, SSL's, etc. Is there anything we might be overlooking in deciding to offer these services?
Click to expand...
 
Another alternative to Whmcs is Blesta, which is quite good.

You can also consider purchasing a Reseller Package that doesn't include Billing Software (WHMCS, ClientExec, Blesta etc') and instead, purchase the license for the software yourself. You then have full ownership and control. There are plenty of packages out there for just a few dollars a month.
 
Blesta is also good but not that much addons available for blesta when compared to whmcs and almost all the addons are developed keeping whmcs in mind.
 
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