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Free Reseller hosting.. Need some suggestion
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Free Reseller hosting.. Need some suggestion

ViridWebViridWeb Member, Host Rep
edited May 2023 in General

Hi friends!
As you all know we are currently running a free shared hosting service for our LowEnd members.

Now we want to extend the service from Shared hosting to Reseller hosting where you have the power to control the accounts registered under your account.

You can use it to make money/Starting your own hosting company

Howerver as you all know we it's a free service so it's comes with basic support which may force you to wait at least for 24hrs (minimum) to get a reply.

You can also use it for development work instead of selling it to others

So for that we need your suggestion

Note:
1. Due to recent multiple abuses/fake orders we may block some perticular countries.
2. We may allow only selected peoples by forcing manual verification.
3. As a free service we will never ask for Documents

So please provide us your valuable suggestion

It's not confirm if we really start this free reseller service.

We will wait for feedbacks from our existing and other LET member's comments.

For mod: Please Remove the thread if it's violating LET rules

You can also suggest us which feature you want (if we start the service)

Note: we may not include paid features like node.js/ruby etc.

Thank yoU!

Comments

  • HeostHeost Member

    Some idea:

    • Phone verification before order
    • Put a price of $0.01 or something like this and give coupons code here and there from time to time to offer it completly free.
    • Hide the product from the order page, give the link only to some community

    If you launch it, i would like to try.

  • Thank you for the free service, but what is your motivation for offering a reseller plan to make money for others?

  • It's a bad decision. Distributing services for free to get reach or even to support people is a bad decision because it will eventually disrupt the market. Many more guys will pop into this industry as a hosting provider by using your free reseller hosting, some LET providers will lose their customers. Eventually at the end the industry will have a good growth in the number of providers, but quite less growth in number of buyers. I've tried it a few years ago, and providing free services made many issues into my business. Resellers can host anything, I got so many abuse reports, my server provider suspended the server a few times. My IP address got blacklisted on a few blacklists, I changed Ip address a few times. Some of the paid buyers I had took free hosting and I had a significant loss. I changed server providers a few times but faced so many issues, so many abuse reports and the resources usage kept increasing.

    At the end I have stopped providing free services, I given 3 months to my existing customers to shift from free service to paid service. Most of them shifted to another providers like epizy who provides free services. I didn't got much benefit, instead I lost a lot of money and also lost reputation.

  • bvgfao40723bvgfao40723 Member
    edited May 2023

    @titaniumboy said:
    I didn't got much benefit, instead I lost a lot of money and also lost reputation.

    This is somewhat similar to what happened to @xTom , who provided low cost and high quality services, but ended up being attacked and cursed.

    Thanked by 2xTom ViridWeb
  • labzelabze Member, Patron Provider

    I'd say it is a bad idea. One thing is providing free hosting yourself, that is fine because you actually have a business that you want to be successful (I asumme). However, if somebody starts a webhosting business without any investment at all other than paying for a domain name then they have nothing to lose by ditching it at some point. It is not detrimental for you nor the reseller but it can be detrimental for those customers of the reseller who are suddenly left with nothing because wasn't entertained with the idea of hosting anyway.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep

    please don't.

    there's already a shit ton of hosting websites due to myownfreehost, every single free unlimited hosting has a relation to the shitty ifastnet service, which runs outdated software.

    Thanked by 2titaniumboy ViridWeb
  • therawtheraw Member

    @titaniumboy said:
    It's a bad decision. Distributing services for free to get reach or even to support people is a bad decision because it will eventually disrupt the market. Many more guys will pop into this industry as a hosting provider by using your free reseller hosting, some LET providers will lose their customers. ...

    so you think that someone who spends money for a web hosting would drop that and go to a free hosting server where nothing is guaranteed on part of performance, security or anything ??

    if someone can switch your hosting that easy for such free service you may consider taking care of your company better.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep

    @theraw said:

    @titaniumboy said:
    It's a bad decision. Distributing services for free to get reach or even to support people is a bad decision because it will eventually disrupt the market. Many more guys will pop into this industry as a hosting provider by using your free reseller hosting, some LET providers will lose their customers. ...

    so you think that someone who spends money for a web hosting would drop that and go to a free hosting server where nothing is guaranteed on part of performance, security or anything ??

    if someone can switch your hosting that easy for such free service you may consider taking care of your company better.

    sadly... Yes. I have seen people do it and regret it in the next day.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • You have here the better honeypot:
    "As a free service we will never ask for Documents"
    All scammers will install their hosting services sooner or later!
    Indeed, if you are NSA affiliated, it's a smart tactic ;p

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • ViridWebViridWeb Member, Host Rep
    edited May 2023

    Thank you all for your feedback.

    And yes abuse is a serious concern, specially for this industry.

    Please note: even if we provide free reseller service, and even if we allow you to resale, we still not recommend to use it for running your hosting business using our free service.

    All free service will comes with some restrictions like very limited email sending limits, very basic support (may takes more than 24hrs to reply if it's not a serious issue), very limited features, limited performance etc.

    right now We are currently discussing internally about our next step regarding the free reseller service.

    We will update here once we finalize.

    Till then you can provide more information or feedback.

    And for account approval, we do not activate free services instantly. We rejects majority of the orders we received.

    And for free reseller hosting (if we launch it), as @Heost recommend we may enable new features like mobile verification or even ID verification etc. But I'm even with them we will reject most of the orders

    Thanks for your support 🙏

  • emghemgh Member

    @ViridWeb said: even if we provide free reseller service, and even if we allow you to resale, we still not recommend to use it for running your hosting business

    :O

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • @FatGrizzly said:
    please don't.

    there's already a shit ton of hosting websites due to myownfreehost, every single free unlimited hosting has a relation to the shitty ifastnet service, which runs outdated software.

    iFastNet is NOT s**t

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep

    @ChippyTech said:

    @FatGrizzly said:
    please don't.

    there's already a shit ton of hosting websites due to myownfreehost, every single free unlimited hosting has a relation to the shitty ifastnet service, which runs outdated software.

    iFastNet is NOT s**t

    Okay kid, do whatever the fuck you want. I won't fuck up your opinion.

    You have been harrassing me over multiple platforms now, continue to promote your shitty ifastnet reseller account. I won't give two fucks.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited May 2023
    1. No email at all, any outgoing email ports blocked;
    2. IF email would have to be allowed, redirect to a smarthost for inspection and throttle AND block any direct mail from web scripts;
    3. Scan nonstop for malware;
    4. Clear rules and tutorials;
    5. While not asking for documents is a great idea because freedom can only come with anonymity, reseller accounts should only be granted to people you trust or are recommended by people you trust. "A customer did it!" is too often used as an excuse and you should make it clear that any abuse of a customer would lead to the termination of the whole account without warning;
    6. A kind of a limiting factor would have to be implemented. For example allow only non-free domains and no subdomains;
    7. Severe CPU/memory limitations should be implemented in order to avoid proxying or similar problems.

    This is a great idea if you wish to study abusers and find ways to best protect against them.
    It would be complicated and possibly costly, but you will quickly become an expert and that kind of an expertise is kpretty valuable.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • LeviLevi Member

    Free hosting never worked and will never work. There is no logic chain which connects free service to client which will earn money from it. Greed will kick in as soon as clientele reach X target, than provider will proceed to machinations for monetization.

    Artificially imposing slow support will not work and it is just scummy practice.

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • ViridWebViridWeb Member, Host Rep

    Thank you everyone for your feedbacks.
    So for now we postpone the decision. We will discuss this internally and will update here if there is any new updates.

    Thanks again

  • ourvdsourvds Member

    ,l yes phone for VERIFICATION WOULD BE NOT BAD

    Thanked by 1ViridWeb
  • ViridWebViridWeb Member, Host Rep

    @ourvds said:
    ,l yes phone for VERIFICATION WOULD BE NOT BAD

    Thank you for your suggestion.
    Best Regards,

  • emghemgh Member

    I'd say the free shared hosting was a bad decision.

    Not wanting to be rude, but I wouldn't wanna get a single ticket from someone paying me nothing.

    Even getting one from someone paying a buck or two seems to fuck the profit up for that client for the rest of the month, at least.

    So I'd avoid free burden on support.

    So, based on the above, I'm even more skeptical towards free reseller hostnig.

    So much trouble.

    I'd even go as far as saying one "client" signing up for free reselling hosting is probably a higher burden on your support compared to someone paying a few bucks, I just feel like that'll be the case - don't know why.

    Also, in the end, you'll either have to start to cancel inactive accounts (and people will get mad, and you'll lose reputation) - or you'll have to host loads and loads on totally inactive websites.

    Think of all the abuse as well.

    DMCA take-down requests etc etc.

    That's a hassle with shared hosting.

    Now imagine the "free client" don't even know who is uploading this DMCA covered material because they themselves offer free hosting to everyone at some forum based on your free reseller.

    I'd say get out of the free shared hosting ASAP and don't start the free reseller hosting.

    But that's just my 2c and I have no real experience in the field, although I have been a consultant and I know how much time client support really takes.

    Thanked by 1sasslik
  • @bvgfao40723 said:

    @titaniumboy said:
    I didn't got much benefit, instead I lost a lot of money and also lost reputation.

    This is somewhat similar to what happened to @xTom , who provided low cost and high quality services, but ended up being attacked and cursed.

    I believe that some of the attacks on xtom were due to misconduct by his sub-brands or partners

  • JasonMJasonM Member

    free reselller hosting can be implemented under specific conditions for only specific users, like they must be active on LET for 3+ years, not offering port 25, limiting sub-reseller account to 20-25 users only, etc.

  • emghemgh Member
    edited June 2023

    @JasonM said:
    free reselller hosting can be implemented under specific conditions for only specific users, like they must be active on LET for 3+ years, not offering port 25, limiting sub-reseller account to 20-25 users only, etc.

    Ehh

    Not offering sub-resellers through these half-assed 3rd party modules would be even better no?

    Or is it an official feature yet?

  • ViridWebViridWeb Member, Host Rep

    For now the Idea dropped by the team..
    Mods @Arkas can you please close the thread?

    Thank You all 🙏

  • ArkasArkas Moderator

    Thread closed.

This discussion has been closed.