Downtime

[maritimer]

I was just wondering.

I know many use their reseller accounts to offer small or specialized hosting packages.

How do you manage if your reseller account goes down, taking all your clients sites and your very own site/support mechanism down too?

Your clients cannot reach you because your site is obviously offline.

So what plans do you have in place in the event of such an embarassing situation?

There`s nothing worse for a client to find their site is down potentially for hours or more, then to find the actual company site down too.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by maritimer

Your clients cannot reach you because your site is obviously offline.

Don't worry, any client that would sign up with a host that doesn't have a phone number is just looking for cheap, not good.

[maritimer]

That`s all very well, but if your website is down they won`t know the phone number. Unfortunately not everyone thinks to write down a companies support number in case it goes offline.

[smp]

Originally Posted by maritimer

How do you manage if your reseller account goes down, taking all your clients sites and your very own site/support mechanism down too?

You could have a support email that isn't @ the domain of you site and is either free or on a different server so it won't affect you email support.
Though very few people do this as they see it as unprofessional.

Originally Posted by Serra

any client that would sign up with a host that doesn't have a phone number is just looking for cheap, not good.

I happen to disagree with you there; a lot of quality hosts don't have phone support, and a lot of hosts that do hardly answer them. Not to mention those that do can usually only help you with billing and pre-sales matters and are useless with anything else.
A lot of hosts have phone support on their site for the same reason they have a 30 day money back guarantee.

Regards, Steve Xx

[maritimer]

Originally Posted by smp

You could have a support email that isn't @ the domain of you site and is either free or on a different server so it won't affect you email support.
Though very few people do this as they see it as unprofessional.
Regards, Steve Xx

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately that still won`t help if your site is down because the reseller account is down. They won`t know the email address without being able to see the site.

I guess when a welcome email is sent out, I could stress that they print off the welcome email which contains the off server addy.

[smp]

Originally Posted by maritimer

I guess when a welcome email is sent out, I could stress that they print off the welcome email which contains the off server addy.

That would be a good idea and a way to get around the situation. If you were doing that you could also post it in where your regular support email is (on your site) stating if the site is down they can contact you via...

But I wouldn't worry about it too much downtime is significantly small and when it does happen it will be back up shortly anyway.

Regards, Steve Xx

You can also host the company website on a separate hosting plan.

[gtgeorge]

Or even use Serra's fallback sytem description elsewhere in the forum to ensure your site is available along with email.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by gtgeorge

Or even use Serra's fallback sytem description elsewhere in the forum to ensure your site is available along with email.

You mean this has all been cover before in great detail both here in the forum and on the Wiki? I'm shocked.

[maritimer]

Originally Posted by gtgeorge

Or even use Serra's fallback sytem description elsewhere in the forum to ensure your site is available along with email.

I missed something, do you have a link?

[gtgeorge]

Originally Posted by maritimer

I missed something, do you have a link?

Yep... look in Serra's sig for WIKI or do a search for bullet proof ....and then if all else fails try this http://gatorwiki.holmis.se/index.php?title=Proof

[maritimer]

So Serras plan would work for my situation as follows?:

I purchase for example the Aluminum plan here at HG, register my domain of: mydomainname.com and also request private nameservers for it.

Within this reseller will be client`s accounts using those private nameservers which are already registered with their registrars.

Ok, I would now purchase a cheap shared account on another network. This is where I will host my business site, support, billing etc. Using the same domain name as with the reseller plan. I would use the nameservers given by the host and point my domain to them.

Is this a fool proof setup? In the event the reseller server at HG goes down, then my business site would remain up as it`s on another network?

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by maritimer

Is this a fool proof setup? In the event the reseller server at HG goes down, then my business site would remain up as it`s on another network?

There are some subtleties, such as signing up for a notification service, etc., and having somewhere to move the sites to in an emergency.

Nothing in life or computers is completely foolproof, but Serra's bullet-proof method is pretty close.

However, and please don't take this the wrong way, if you're going to get anywhere in this business, you should recognize that there's a lot to learn, that there's always a way (even if you don't know what that way could be), and that you've got to anticipate and have alternatives for everything ready.

Assuming that you and your clients would, by necessity, be S.O.L. automatically if HG went down; that nobody would have jotted down or kept your contact info; and other single-ply thinking is the wrong approach.

It is probably a good idea, no matter what else you implement, to get something like "SOSmycompanyname@gmail" or "mycompanyEmergency@gmail" and put that info in a signature for your welcome email (you can explain that if everything plus Google goes out, there are probably more significant world problems going on--so if ALL ELSE FAILS...)

[charlesgan]

Originally Posted by maritimer

Ok, I would now purchase a cheap shared account on another network. This is where I will host my business site, support, billing etc. Using the same domain name as with the reseller plan. I would use the nameservers given by the host and point my domain to them.

IMO... hosting both your business site and the reseller together is much better. Customised the private nameserver... so your business site and client site is refering to same nameserver. You dont want your main site with nameserver refering to other hosting, and reseller plan is another. which is confusing. Your hosting should be good, so you host your own site, this is way to convience customer.

note that the downtime is minimum.
even you having another shared hosting somewhere, guess your downtime would still the same 99.99.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by maritimer

Is this a fool proof setup? In the event the reseller server at HG goes down, then my business site would remain up as it`s on another network?

The bullet proof setup would work for your main site, if you follow the guide I wrote. You can't fail proof your reseller clients, as the cost would be too high. If they are looking for bullet proof hosting, they would need to be paying a lot more than $10 or $20 a month. However, without a dedicated that you run, I wouldn't try offering an SLA. The business risk is too high.

Basically, what you want is for your main hosting site to be up if your reseller account goes down. You don't need a bullet proof setup, you can just put it on a shared account and use a fake URL for your hosting site on the reseller account. If you need bullet proof hosting then you'll need something like the dyndns setup with fail-over protection.