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cPanel/WHM Reseller accounts - what do you actually want? [market research]
AnthonySmith
Member, Patron Provider
Hi Folks,
Just looking for some feedback from those that have reseller accounts in terms of what you actually want and expect?
It would help if you could state your use e.g. using a reseller account but its just for me to setup lots of seperated sites for clients or if you actually sell hosting and integrate it in to WHMCS.
Do you want white label name servers, overselling for disk space, ruby/rails, shell access etc etc, just trying to get a good idea on what resellers really want as I don't resell myself I would rather be guided by those that use them when deciding how to setup the new white label reseller packages.
lets assume the packages are $2, $4, $7 and $10 p/month, I am thinking pure NVMe, nightly backups included, no account limits, 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 200GB, dedicated IP, DDOS protected, 1TB,2TB,3TB and 4TB bandwidth.
Any feedback welcome.
Comments
White label name servers is a nice idea.
Complete dedicated service w/ as many IPv4 and IPv6 for myself, unused before, with a switch to magically change them. #0.50/yr.
As of me, I don't mind on white labeling or overselling disk space. When I buy shared hosting, I want reseller account to have access to WHM and better control of my hosting needs, separete them on different user accounts. Shell access is always a good add-on on normal WHM access to have an easy way to tar and rsync my files. As enabling most of the WHM/CPanel reseller assets, because lot of reseller hosting providers do limit the features of their products.
I am not belonging to the majority of the potential clients, because I am not willing to create my own hosting company, but I guess there is even a small demand for reseller accounts used differently than just reselling hosting.
I do alot of web design and offer niche hosting. HD and BW is relative. Obviously the more the better.
These are non negotiable in my book:
- White Label nameservers
- Jetpack or R1soft
- Decent ticket reply times with more than canned replies.
- Transparency. If something is F'ed up just say it.
- Overselling enabled
- SSD
- Servers with 12 or more cores and 32gb or more ram
I have paid extra for these perks:
- ddos protection
- End user support
- SLA
- Dedicated IP
- WHMCS
**I would pay even more for:
**- Real redundant cloud reseller accounts. (Think dediserve)
Other Notes:
prob could type more but thats all that comes to mind atm.
I use reseller accounts for both. Some for private websites, some for reselling/clients.
Your pricing seems nice, however I'd recommend to offer "unmetered traffic". Most will never even reach 1TB, but these kinda limits still keep people away (me included even though I do know I'd actually never reach that bw anyway). Why is that? Because people love to have peace of mind. Just offer "unmetered traffic" and contact any abusers/heavy users personally. Afterall you can still give them a custom offer then.
Few of my clients on my reseller ever used more than 20-30GB traffic per month anyway.
Whitelabel Nameserver is nice to have though not a requirement if I use it for private projects. If it's for reselling/clients I prefer white label solutions though.
As for backup solutins JetBackup is my favorite. Dedicated IP doesn't matter to me. Overselling should be enabled.
Hope I could help
Good luck!
Ympker
great feedback thanks, a few things I had not considered added to the whiteboard.
Interesting that a 12 core minimum is a none negotiable, personally I would have thought 8 x 4 GHz+ cores would have been favorable, especially NVMe backed, perhaps I am still thinking more about general hosting rather than muli-tenant re-sellers though.
Would be particularly interested in others opinions on the CPU side.
You should be thinking it also in relation to license costs.
You're spending way more on cPanel licensing by having 4 nodes than 1 - 2 much bigger ones.
We use 32 thread CPU's just to deal with some of the busy resellers we have.
Remember, CPU limits are applied per user, not per reseller. A reseller could signup and have 8 - 10 busy accounts, and they all sit there blowing CPU out.
Francisco
thanks, fair points, I guess EPYC it is then.
I'm using Reseller hosting from BuyShared and Ramnode and generally require:-
Must:
1. SSD (with good I/O and not that 1MB/s or 5MB/s like EIG/Daddy hosts)
2. 1 CPU and 1.5 GB RAM minimum per cpanel account (if WP sites are hosted, due to plugins running all the time and traffic hits, the RAM might spike)
3. The Node should have extra CPU like Buyshared (32) v/s Ramnode (8) which is always full during peak hours and during scheduled daily backup time. (My WHM data shows: Buyshared 25-27 CPU load, Ramnode: 15-16 CPU load peak times). The node CPU speed are BS: 2.8, AND RM 3.4 Ghz (approx as I don't remember correct values, but BS is on E5, RM on E3 v2)
4. Overselling enabled. 90% of my clients use below 1 GB space. But showing them they've 99 GB left feels good.
5. AutoSSL
6. White label nameservers
7. Daily backups (auto)
8. One-click app installs
9. MariaDB instead of MySQL db
10. Litespeed server (my both providers have it, and its much fast than apache for php pages)
Optional:
1. dedicate ip
2. mailchannels
3. WHMCS / any billing
4. Integrating Cloudflare railgun in Cpanel (ramnode is having it and it seems fairly fast though not super fast)
5. Shell access
6. 2+ TB bandwidth
The main reason I use a reseller account is purely for creating separate accounts for each website I build for a client and being able to hand over the cPanel to them if needed.
Mostly I avoid shared hosting and stick to a VPS, but having access to softaculous on shared hosting can be handy for quick mockups etc.
SSD is preferable over HDD, other limits don't really bother me. Having php mail working is an advantage for the simple contact forms, etc.
@Sofia_K What's your experience with RamNode Reseller? Solid?
Yes. It's bit premium experience in terms of speed (my wp blogs loads bit faster on ramnode, than on buyshared). It's either due to E3 CPUs or bandwidth provider routes. But its little faster.
Note: this is with Cloudflare railgun set OFF on ramnode
I've enabled railgun on certain cpanel accounts only.
@AnthonySmith sir.
I prefer whitelabel provider,
I use reseller to host family website, so they can manage their own hosting.
one thing that I really want to know when the server down, what happen?
Overselling enabled, white label nameservers, shell access, ability to set rDNS for that dedicated IP, Litespeed is a requirement for me on shared.
A lot of webdevelopers are moving to Artisan/Laravel, git-based and composer workflows, SSH access is the best method to apply this. I work at a pretty large managed hosting company based in the Netherlands and we see this every day.
If you don't have already enabled SSH access i would suggest doing that with a method to prevent weak passwords or only work via SSH keys.
I'd also recommend getting more cores/threads. Dual Xeon E5 would give you whooping 32 threads as when you start adding licenses cost it's going to get expensive so you would wanna make sure server can handle amount of users reseller add. Also, CloudLinux has reseller based limits just in case.
yep, for me reseller is for my own projects, i also have ramnode and buyshared, normally only when the project grows too big do i move it out, i would say the most important thing is hard to point because its stability (a combination of the hardware/software/account features and limits/support), it can go slow or have issues from time to time, thats fine, but it needs to be reliable and stable for the most part and thats what ramnode and buyshared offer above all, besides that i would say:
important
* ssh (mostly to move things between servers)
* backups (i do my own, but you can never have enough)
* overselling (because i only check total space of the account)
* nice price (+yearly discounts, because i tend to pay yearly)
* good basic limits per user (io,ram,cpu...)
* space and bandwidth (its good to have lots of extra space and bandwidth but i dont mind at all tiers, especially since most other stuff is all the same for all accounts, if going a tier above gets you more than extra space/bandwidth and say instead of 7 days its 12 days backups or higher/more cpu per account or more ram per account, that would be a good incentive in my case to just go to higher)
* clear terms of service (small and clear and honest)
less important
* white label nameservs (no need)
* php mail (nice, but there are better, more flexible alternatives)
* mailchannels (its ok, but i mostly send few emails from each account so no big deal)
* dedicated ip (super nice, but half of the sites, especially if they have media or super scripty are under cloudflare so... could be a paid extra)
* auto install scripts (again nice, but not really hard to install most scripts nowadays)
* location (not that important nowadays, but i do prefer inside the european union for privacy (uk is the exception, great network but yeah too many issues there) and usa for the network)
besides all that @Sofia_K said
ohhh and if you do go ahead @AnthonySmith i would be very interested in signing up, im a former client (i just don't have as much time to mess around with vps) and your service was impeccable, thanks.
You can apply CPU limits per reseller in LVE
Almost nobody does that though and I've seen it turn many people away. It would turn me away tbh, too.
interesting, I had intended on doing that, I do not see why it would be a turn off to impose limits that prevent a single customer of a reseller from impacting performance for every single site on the server, perhaps you could explain?
is it one of those double edge sword scenarios where by you would rather have maximum speed 95% of the time and suffer the 5% of the time when things run like crap because of "insert wordpress plugin here" ?
The sub account created by the reseller would still be limited as a user on LVE, I believe reseller limit is just a limit of total resources for all the accounts on the reseller account.
Yep, but by putting fair limits in place per reseller it prevents 1 resellers end user from destroying performance for every other resellers customers/sites no?
I think it is the reseller limit that would put me off. I can happily live with 1 CPU, 1GB RAM LVE Limit per cPanel Account (that's about the standard I believe; you can also check my signature for a comparison chart to compare imposed limits a bit), however having the reseller account being limited to certain amount of ram/cpu in total makes it hard to estimate. See, there are two scenarios I can think of when limiting the reseller and both make me feel hesitant (and I am someone who may understand the limits more than your avg. guy that wants a reseller):
a) The CPU/RAM limit applies to the whole reseller account. Individual cPanel Accounts are not limited. Now assume 5 CPU / 5GB RAM are allocated to the reseller. You'd offer "unlimited cPanel Accounts" (what is also more or less the standard I believe) but with basic math if I apply the bare minimum of regular cPanel limits 1 CPU/1GB RAM that makes 5 accounts I could host on that reseller if everyone would use their resources. Even worse if one uses more (as we said in this scenario individual cPanel Accs are not limited) it could lead to not even being able to offer stable hosting for 5 cPanel accounts.
b) The CPU/RAM limit applies to the whole reseller account and each cPanel Account is limited to 1 CPU/1GB. We assume 5 CPU/ 5 GB RAM as reseller limit again: Now I do know that the clients can't overstep their boundaries, however it is also hard to oversell, knowing you have a total limit of 5CPU/5GB RAM as if 5 of your clients use their allocated 1CPU/1GB RAM your resources are exhausted already. Now you could make the cPanel limits smaller however then you'd loose even more against the competition as 1CPU/1GB is more or less the standard nowadays.
What I'm trying to say is I have kudos for every reseller host that does self hosting and does all the thinking and planning behind it and then is able to follow the industry standard of unlimited cPanel, 1CPU/1GB RAM, unmetered bw, Jetbackup and whatnot.. Truth is though that anything else I wouldn't even consider BECAUSE there are hosts that offer this (again see my spreadsheet) and reputable hosts at that. At this point any limiting on the whole reseller account would turn me away immediatly.
Hope I could clear that up a bit @AnthonySmith
Setting it to a fair limit should be fine, not sure want would be fine as fair limit, I've not used any provider that turned that setting on.
That's the problem sorta. Even a fair limit would seem not very attractive when most offer limitless reseller Accounts.
Not really
sorry perhaps I am being a twonk?
I have looked at your spreadsheet and every single reseller on there has CPU,EP, IOPS,PROC limits, so what am I missing?
Also lets keep in mind that the CL limiter it not a hard limiter, it is an avg limiter, it does not prevent XXXX number from being hit the instant it is hit so you get some wiggle room for quick bursts beyond that.
Lets give you a scenario; when the limit is applied to a reseller account it by definition passes down to the end user, or rather group of end users under that account so if a reseller is limited to say 200% CPU, 4GB RAM(pMem) and 1000 NPROC, 250 MB/s IO and 10240 IOPS, I think that it is fair to say that is incredibly generous for a €2 reseller account
There is no way any site hosted on shared hosting that is sold as a service should ever hit those limits, and further more with such big limits a collection of sites under a reseller account should never be averaging those limits.
My thinking by imposing even such generous limits is that it is fair of me to say that no 1 site on shared hosting should hit that however i want a safe guard in place in case they do so that 1 end user does not take out every single end users performance on the entire server.
Why am I wrong?
No worries, I am also a little confused rn
Alright, before reading your example let me just try to quickly re-phrase what I was trying to say:
I do have no problem if you impose CPU/RAM/I/O/LVE limits on individual cPanel Accounts created by the Reseller Account.
I would however not buy a reseller plan that imposes limits on the whole reseller account.
E.g. "All cPanel Accounts combined that have been created with that reseller account cannot exceed a certain CPU/RAM/LVE limit". This is what would make me feel uncomfortable and I am under impression that this is what you had planned to do.
So now I'll reply to your post:
Everyone of the hosts in my spreadsheet does impose LVE limits put per cPanel Account. Not per reseller account (like you want to do; atleast I was under the impression that you wanted to limit reseller account to a total of X CPU/RAM..). See, if the whole reseller account is limited to 5 CPU Cores, all cPanel Accounts on it together can only use 5 CPU cores. If you'd only limit the cPanel Accounts on a reseller to 1 CPU/1GB RAM though and allow unlimited cPanel Accounts to be created they could all together use X Cores and X RAM where X is the number of cPanel Accounts created and equals the combined load.
I could have 30 cPanel Accounts on my reseller each using 1 Core which amounts to 30 Cores. I couldn't do that if the whole reseller account is limited to say 5 CPU Cores.
Yeah, and that's totally fine. But again these CL limits should be applied per cPanel Account on that reseller account not as a limit for the whole reseller account (when I say "whole reseller account" I mean all cPanel Accounts on that reseller account combined).
So yes, I have nothing against you applying the CL limits on EVERY cPanel Account on the reseller account however I am against setting a limit as to how much CPU/RAM the reseller account can use. I am pretty sure actually, that this is what confuses you and I hope it is more clear now but if not don't feel bad to ask again. I'm probably just unable to explain this properly.
The limits you name in your scenario are more than generous. When you say they pass "down to the end user, or rather group of end users" do you mean to each individual cPanel Account created on that reseller account or is it a limit all cPanel Accounts combined cannot exceed? If it means all cPanel accounts combined cannot exceed that limit, it would mean that no matter how many cPanel accounts are on your reseller, the total usage of that one reseller account can never exceed the limits you stated. So this would mean the whole reseller account can never be allocated more resources by your server than the ones specified?
I totally agree. No regular site on shared hosting should/would ever hit these limits.
TL;DR: If you want to apply the limits the same way Ramnode, Hostmantis, and others on my list do, you are all good. That's totally fine and nothing I'd consider a problem. Pretty sure that's maybe even what you meant and something just got lost in translation here
Right, I think we are essentially on the same page apart from the bit I quoted below (which I will cover under it) I just think perhaps we are considering limits in different ways.
My idea being that the limits could be as much of a quarter of the entire servers resources for a single reseller account which frankly if any reseller is hitting on a regular basis they would likely be 'encouraged' on to their own server anyway.
My definition of limits is to limit wide spread impact, not to impact standard or even burst performance, think of it like the engine limiter on my car preventing it from going over 140mph even though it is well capable of 180mph, I am never going to do 140mph anyway but just in case it is there to prevent me from taking out everyone around me and my passengers.
That said i get why the idea of limits would make you uneasy.
If you have 30 accounts all needing to use 100% of a core/thread at the same time, you don't need a reseller account you need your own dual E5 server, but yes I get that if you have 30 accounts it is possible that a scenario exists that means they all try to burst at the same time and if you only have 2 cores hard limit you will get artificial slow down after about 15 minutes of burst with the CL limiter.
lots to consider, If I do decide to limit things it will likely be a retroactive step and only if required then, either way it will be transparent.
Gotcha!
Regarding the part you quote and your reply to it: Totally agree, that if one needs 30 Cores 100% 24/7 one should get a server. But as you have also stated there may be scenarios in which it is just more peace of mind to have no reseller account hard limit even when you don't plan on using 30 Cores (like WTF?!) 24/7.
I think you are on a good way then
Good luck!