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The person who buys a reseller account from such a provider would be the one who handles the tickets of their "customers" - it's no upstream funnel, fuck that, it would be a a nightmare! lol
If it's a large provider, they sometimes handle support for you, via a "white label" ticketing system (they never mention any company name on the support site or in tickets). Sometimes they let you create a customised support site, for example by adding the reseller's logo or changing the colours, but in the backend it's still the provider's support techs handling things.
Having said that, not all providers do that (especially smaller ones), and resellers need to have some sort of value-add over the provider. If a reseller doesn't provide any value over the provider, then why wouldn't customers just go directly to the provider?
A common value-add for resellers is that they provide better support, for example via chat, phone, or even in-person at an office (if they're primarily focused on one region). The reseller would handle basic things themselves, or pass them to the provider if they can't fix them (eg. issues with particular servers)
You handle the ticket.
I guess it would not work if one relies on simply forwarding the clients' issues to the upstream.
Boutique hosts often secure clients by fast or warm response. Otherwise, why don't people just use those big players?
Imagine - if you start a hosting business and OVH is your upstream, do you think you would get a meaningful reply that your end-clients would have for you? (unless it is a 100% hardware failure that they are responsible for)
Yes, OVH has the best uptime or infrastracture. But in terms of ticket response time, you have better luck winning the lottery than hoping to get one from them.
So... TLDR... if one always needs to rely on their upstream to give a solution, very likely the clients wouldn't stay for long.
It's pretty rare for a company to offer reseller hosting with white-label support.
Honestly, if you're simply reselling you need to do something, competing on price is never going to work.
Reselling hosting seems to be the most profitable for those who are already providing other, related services such as website design or those who manage websites for, say, local small businesses.