Technical Reseller Questions

Hello,

An interested reseller here.

I have quite a few pre-sales questions I want to be crystal clear on before signing up/moving so here it goes:

1) Does Hostgator use the <virtualhost> container to specify the directives for ServerAlias or ServerName to = the first hostname set up under a WHM account for each shared IP? What I am seeking is the opposite of what is directed in this cPanel forum post: http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....ite+configured
I do not want the customer to be able to ping my FQDN and pull up http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX and up comes my first customers website. It should be set to the default "server hostname" so that it will reflect "no website configured here"

2) Does Hostgator have the mailman program set up correctly in cPanel so that all hyperlinks within cPanel point to the customers domain and NOT mail.customersdomain.com? Are there any issues with anyone outstanding that exhibit problems where customer1's mailing list traffic is appearing in customer2's logs?

3) With a reseller account, you get AP correct? How does that work exactly? Does it come installed already? Are there contracts for auto-updates for the software aswith most cPanel/WHM contracts?

4) What are your methods of dealing with servers that have been blacklisted? I have been in a situation before where someone on my server was constantly uploading bots via SSH (presumably) and my host did absolutly nothing about it. They would not even move my account to another server upon request. I had to submit a ticket every time I saw it in senderbase/spamcop. Most of the major corporations these days use some type of rbl inclusion -- major domains like sbc.com, cisco.com, eds.com, ect... What is your proceedure for suspending accounts with such activity?

5) Do you allow sharing? Either http or https? For example:

http://domain.com/~user
https://domain.com/~user

If so, will you disable this for my account should I sign up with hostgator?

7) What is your policy for turnaround on trouble tickets? What are your min/max resolution times typically? What are your min/max 1st response times, typically? I consider over 24 hours for a response to be unacceptable. Especially for resellers!

8) Are you a reseller? I know you lease your space from theplanet (preferred), but are you a reseller of any other hosting company other than leasing the space directly from theplanet?

9) What are your policies regarding scheduled outages? Do you notify resellers? All customers? If so, what method of delivery notification do you use?

10) Are you in any way affiliated with DimeNOC a/k/a HostDime a/k/a Surpass Hosting?

11) I need my Custom DNS set up in a slightly different way than most hosts normally set them up. Usually it goes like this: ns1.resellerdomain.com and ns2.resellerdomain.com. I use an abbreviation of my reseller domain so that it is shorter like this: ns1.rdn.com and ns1.rdn.com. All of my customers use this DNS name so it needs to be set up this way. I do not want to use this domain, however, for my main reseller domain name. After I get my main reseller account created - and then create an account in WHM for rdn.com, will you set the Custom DNS up this way?

12) DNS Administration in WHM allows me to edit my DNS records/templates for all domains in my WHM account EXCEPT for the main reseller domain. I need the SOA for the DNS record to explicitly use my name servers for its A records and DNS contact email needs to be support.mydomain.com (support@mydomain.com).

Example:
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_rep.../hostgator.com
Nameserver ns1.hostgator.com
DNS admin root@gator.hostgator.com
Reverse DNS gator.hostgator.com

These need to reflect my entries. Swap our hostgator.com with the above and what I need would appear like so:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_rep...//mydomain.com
Nameserver ns1.rdn.com
DNS admin support@mydomain.com
Reverse DNS unknown

I can control that for all domains under my reseller domain but need to make sure that hostgator will make the necissary changes to reflect my main reseller domain that is used when signing up.

13) Can Hostgator do a server-to-server transfer from WHM? What is required of me in order to facilitate this? I would need all the accounts transferred, but can't reset everyones passwords. Is there a way to just transfer all accounts under WHM without having to have every cPanel user/pass?


To some people on this board it may seem as if I'm giving the 'n'th degree. Some people on this board, you will understand where I am coming from. Regardless, I don't care what people think, my customer's interests are the number 1 priority here so I must be sure on these points before we can give further consideration to moving to hostgator.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Stephen

"ns1.rdn.com and ns1.rdn.com"
that's ns1 and ns2. Sorry, typeo.

[bonzihostin]

Wow! A lot of questions. Contact sales@hostgator.com

Having just discovered HostGator this week, and considering a switch, I would like to see an answer to these questions as well.

[Stef]

Hi,

I'll try to answer most of them.

Originally Posted by stephen

1) <...> It should be set to the default "server hostname" so that it will reflect "no website configured here"

When browsing to the IP address of the server you're hosted on, you'll see the cPanel "There is no website configured at this address" page.

Originally Posted by stephen

3) With a reseller account, you get AP correct? How does that work exactly? Does it come installed already? Are there contracts for auto-updates for the software aswith most cPanel/WHM contracts?

You can request WHM AP after signup for free. You will then receive a download link and the license key. You can install it yourself or have it installed by HostGator for a small fee.

Originally Posted by stephen

4) What are your methods of dealing with servers that have been blacklisted? I have been in a situation before where someone on my server was constantly uploading bots via SSH (presumably) <...> What is your proceedure for suspending accounts with such activity?

This kind of activity will is not tolerated on the HostGator servers. The account will be suspended.

Originally Posted by stephen

5) Do you allow sharing? Either http or https? For example:
http://domain.com/~user
https://domain.com/~user
If so, will you disable this for my account should I sign up with hostgator?

This is allowed. Please contact sales@hostgator.com to see if this can be disabled for your specific account.

Originally Posted by stephen

7) What is your policy for turnaround on trouble tickets? <...>

You get an automatic reply immediately after opening a ticket as a confirmation. Some problems are solved within less then an hour (could be even minutes), others can take a few hours depending on the load and kind of problem. If you want specific statistics you can ask sales if they can provide you this info. You can also take a look at the Customer Experiences forum.

Originally Posted by stephen

8) Are you a reseller? I know you lease your space from theplanet (preferred), but are you a reseller of any other hosting company other than leasing the space directly from theplanet?

No, HostGator owns its servers.

Originally Posted by stephen

9) What are your policies regarding scheduled outages? Do you notify resellers? All customers? If so, what method of delivery notification do you use?

Scheduled outages are announced in the Network Status forum.

Originally Posted by stephen

10) Are you in any way affiliated with DimeNOC a/k/a HostDime a/k/a Surpass Hosting?

No.

Please contact sales@hostgator.com for the other specific questions.

Thank you,
Stef.

[David]

"Scheduled outages are announced in the Network Status forum."

I thought I would add that you can subscribe to the fourms (Network Status and Annoucements for instance) so that you get email updates when new threads are created or existing ones are updated.

David

Nice questions Stephen.
What was your final verdict? Did you sign up?