Domain & Email Reseller Options?

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Drelly

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#280115 27-Nov-2020 10:17

We've been a Reseller with WebDrive for 20 years. We moved all our websites away from them (to SiteHost) several years ago when service started to slip but we still have domains and email with them. I'd really like to move everything away but I'm looking for a good combination of service, price and features. SiteHost service is great and they offer $1 per Gig/Mailbox but their features are very limited for email and the pricing structure makes it hard to compete with other providers for multiple mailboxes or higher storage requirements. I like OpenHosts features but the service is appalling and the new control panel is a maze.

Does anyone know of any domain/email resellers with feature-rich plans, reasonable pricing and good service? I'd rather keep it in NZ but am now wondering if going offshore is a better option?

Zeon

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#2611612 27-Nov-2020 10:20

The Sitehost guys are reasonable. Perhaps you could consider meeting with them and negotiating some special pricing?

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Drelly

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#2611810 27-Nov-2020 14:14

No one loves offering email services now! The Sitehost pricing isn't bad at all. I don't think anyone can compete with the amount of storage that Google Workspace or Office 365 offer for the price anyway. One of the main problems is that there is no way to automatically limit/stop email storage if the user goes over their limit. We just get a notification that someone has gone over their limit and then we have to do something about it. With hundreds of clients, I can only imagine how much time the "am I under my limit yet?" discussions will take up!!

As an aside, is it as difficult as it looks to become a reseller for Office 365 or Google Workspace? I've started but it looks like reams of red tape so far...

networkn

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#2611842 27-Nov-2020 14:50

We like 1stDomains, find their support and pricing reasonable. Owned by Seeby Woodhouse of Voyager.

Drelly

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#2611926 27-Nov-2020 16:04

I rang 1st Domains but was told that they didn't have a reseller system for email?

maffey

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#2612166 28-Nov-2020 10:48

I am in the same boat. Currently shifting all my domains from Webdrive as the new domain management system is completely unusable. We are moving domains to Sitehost and so far they seam excellent, great helpdesk support and management console. They have good features for bulk domain management.

Sitehost do offer a good deal for reseller email. We use Sitehost for email forwarding. Our customers who want full email hosting we direct to Office365 or Gsuite.

I also spoke to 1stdomains, they seam very knowledgeable about domain stuff, however they don't have many reseller features.

Drelly

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#2612232 28-Nov-2020 13:31

maffey:

I am in the same boat. Currently shifting all my domains from Webdrive as the new domain management system is completely unusable. We are moving domains to Sitehost and so far they seam excellent, great helpdesk support and management console. They have good features for bulk domain management.

Sitehost do offer a good deal for reseller email. We use Sitehost for email forwarding. Our customers who want full email hosting we direct to Office365 or Gsuite.

I also spoke to 1stdomains, they seam very knowledgeable about domain stuff, however they don't have many reseller features.

It's a real shame. OpenHost/WebDrive have had some great staff. Josh still does a great job but you have to wonder if the people that own it just hate resellers!? Have you signed up with Google or Microsoft as a reseller? We haven't yet but it's hard to manage emails without it.

maffey

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#2612440 28-Nov-2020 18:51

It is a shame, WebDrive started life as a reseller focused hosting company with a great platform and excellent service at very reasonable prices.

I have not signed up as a reseller for Google or Microsoft. From what I have heard, they pay very little in the way of commission/margin to the reseller and there are hoops to jump through to sign up.

I am happy for my customers to buy there own gsuite/Office365 subscriptions directly from the supplier with us selling support as needed. Yes we miss out on a commission, but the lines of responsibility are very clear.

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Drelly

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#2613000 30-Nov-2020 08:07

I have not signed up as a reseller for Google or Microsoft. From what I have heard, they pay very little in the way of commission/margin to the reseller and there are hoops to jump through to sign up.

Hoops is right. Google require a business plan! I was just wanting to do it to make it easier to manage emails for clients.

Dynamic

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#2613004 30-Nov-2020 08:14

IMHO, Google or 365 email is the right way to go for your clients. Large mailbox. Easy sync of data. Pretty decent security. We prefer 365.

Unless you make money maintaining your client web sites and actively do so, consider Wix or Weebly or the like where security is their hassle not yours. No more compromised WordPress plugins.

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PocketSmith for budgeting and personal finance management. A great Kiwi company.

Drelly

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#2659553 19-Feb-2021 12:08

maffey:

It is a shame, WebDrive started life as a reseller focused hosting company with a great platform and excellent service at very reasonable prices.

I have not signed up as a reseller for Google or Microsoft. From what I have heard, they pay very little in the way of commission/margin to the reseller and there are hoops to jump through to sign up.

I am happy for my customers to buy there own gsuite/Office365 subscriptions directly from the supplier with us selling support as needed. Yes we miss out on a commission, but the lines of responsibility are very clear.

I'm still having dramas trying to sort out this problem. Just re-reading this and I was wondering how you manage with access to client Google accounts? It seems to be getting harder to login to their accounts without re-verifying the different device you're logging in on.

kmarquart

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#2709082 18-May-2021 16:32

Yes Drelly and others with similar OpenHost experiences, I'm in the process of moving all my hosting off OpenHost for the reasons you mentioned. I never had DNs registered there but managing the hosted domains for both web and email is now a frustrating experience which I am sick of having to have their support techies complete for me. Their Plesk and Control Panel is super frustrating and badly designed. So I'm off to a new provider.

Ofcourse the big job is moving all the content (not so bad), and the email accounts (bad).

A killer is the more recent requirement for stricter email passwords which many of my customers will have to reset on all their mail clients. Ugh!!

I moved to WebSlice which is a subsidiary of SiteHost. A bit dearer than OpenHost but okay. Good support and they can help migrate the non-POP mailboxes, server to server with a migration tool.

Have fun!

Drelly

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#2709479 19-May-2021 09:15

kmarquart:

Yes Drelly and others with similar OpenHost experiences, I'm in the process of moving all my hosting off OpenHost for the reasons you mentioned. I never had DNs registered there but managing the hosted domains for both web and email is now a frustrating experience which I am sick of having to have their support techies complete for me. Their Plesk and Control Panel is super frustrating and badly designed. So I'm off to a new provider.

Ofcourse the big job is moving all the content (not so bad), and the email accounts (bad).

A killer is the more recent requirement for stricter email passwords which many of my customers will have to reset on all their mail clients. Ugh!!

I moved to WebSlice which is a subsidiary of SiteHost. A bit dearer than OpenHost but okay. Good support and they can help migrate the non-POP mailboxes, server to server with a migration tool.

Have fun!

We had intended to move all the mailboxes over but even with migration software (which we purchased to do this ourselves) it was going to be far too big a job to justify the time. After moving a couple of clients over, we realised that helping people re-set their email settings was a special kind of torture. So we're stuck with OpenHost for email at the moment.

In an associated update... OpenHost managed to allow a domain name to expire, go through pending release and be released without ever informing us. The client is one of those that have only a vague idea how it all works and wouldn't have understood the emails he got, even if he did receive them. The domain name was then registered by someone else who has also stolen the client's old website from an archive somewhere (it had been offline for a couple of years) and relaunched it. What a shitshow.

networkn

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#2709511 19-May-2021 10:50

Drelley, who was the domain contact email address that renewals were sent to? I sincerely doubt they failed to notify *someone*. It is not thier fault that someone didn't action it. We have domain contact email address set to our renewals system to prevent customers not understanding and renewing. It's part of our onboarding process. There is about 90 days between a domain expiring and someone being able to register the domain, so how did no-one notice email and website wasn't working for 90 days?

Drelly

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#2709602 19-May-2021 12:40

networkn:

Drelley, who was the domain contact email address that renewals were sent to? I sincerely doubt they failed to notify *someone*. It is not thier fault that someone didn't action it. We have domain contact email address set to our renewals system to prevent customers not understanding and renewing. It's part of our onboarding process. There is about 90 days between a domain expiring and someone being able to register the domain, so how did no-one notice email and website wasn't working for 90 days?

The client might have got a notification but we got nothing and it was under our reseller account. Under the WebDrive control panel, we would have received a notification regardless of the domain records. The domain hasn't been used for a website for the last 2-3 years. I guess he didn't use it for email much.