Reseller Hosting with WHMCS

The common question we receive is how to manage the billing & automation aspects of your web hosting company. With InnoHosting Reseller accounts, we bundle in WHMCS for free with our reseller hosting packages (Business, Professional and Enterprise reseller hosting packages).

We bundle in a lot of extras which all integrate into the WHMCS billing system to automate a vast amount of your daily processes.

Billing Automation

Billing is probably one of the most labour intensive tasks you'll end up doing, however because of WHMCS being bundled in with our reseller hosting packages, nearly all of it can be automated. WHMCS will automate:

• Invoice generation
  Will generate invoices on due dates
• Invoice payment tracking
  When a customer pays, the invoice will be marked as paid and the next due date incremented
• Payment reminders & overdue reminders
  Payment reminders are sent before the due date letting the client know their invoice has to be paid soon, when the invoice becomes overdue, overdue reminders are sent.
• Account suspensions and terminations
  Accounts that become overdue by a predefined number of days can be automatically suspended, and eventually terminated. This option can be turned on/off in case you want to manage things manually
• Late Fees
  A late fee can be added automatically. This can be a set amount or a certain percentage of the total due. Late fees can encourage customers to pay early and on time.
• Account cancellation requests
  Customers requesting their account be cancelled can be automatically terminated at the end of their billing cycle
• Automatic account set up
  New orders can be set up and installed upon successful payment by the customer. A welcome email is then dispatched to the customer with their login details.
  

Plus much more perks. As you can see, it can automate a good deal of your web hosting administrative operations.

Domain Registration & SSL Certificates

A feature I quite like is the automation of domains and SSL certificates. No more do you have to manually register a domain name for the web hosting, it can be fully automated. To do this you need a domain reseller in order to sell domains under your own brand. Lucky for you, InnoHosting bundles one in for free. Not only that, but our prices are one of the cheapest in the industry allowing you to set some pretty good margins.

Likewise, SSL certificates can be automatically set up. To do this you'll need an SSL reseller account.. We provide one of those too!

Fraud Protection

One of the many problems facing web hosting companies is fraudulent sign ups. It can be a long manual process verifying all the information manually. However WHMCS bundle in a fraud module and a free MaxMind minFraud account. InnoHosting customers benefit from this too.

New sign ups will be screened and a variety of information checked & verified. This includes cross referencing their telephone number & address with IP they signed up with to see if the locations match, checking if they used a proxy server and much more. A fraud score is determined. You can set orders of a certain score to be rejected or an automated call be placed to verify the phone number.

The above are just three main things which are used regularly. WHMCS offers a lot of other extras which I haven't mentioned above (see whmcs.com for full details).

InnoHosting customers on the following reseller hosting packages come with a free WHMCS license: Business, Professional, Enterprise.

All our Virtual Private Server (VPS hosting) package come with a free WHMCS license too.

For more information on InnoHosting web hosting and reseller hosting services, please see our site at http://www.InnoHosting.com

Web Hosting Business: Returning to Profitability

For those with 1 month+ experience in this industry will know, web hosting it isn't easy. Many hosting companies enter the industry everyday and likewise, many exit.

Most people exit because they struggle to obtain customers and stay profitable. However, there are basic steps you can take to maximise your profit margin..

When your hosting business isn't doing so well, you would be surprised how beneficial it is to get rid of some costs.

One way I have noticed smart companies doing is by consolidating and downgrading. What's the point of having your own dedicated server for just 20 or 30 customers? You have license fees to pay, server security to handle, server management to handle, support for the web hosting customers and much more. Spending $400 a month while only bringing in $180 a month (under the assumption each customer pays $6 per month) is an absolute waste of money.

Put it this way, if someone came to you and offered you another 20 or 30 customers, would you be happy about it? Sure you would, that's another $180 a month. What if they doubled that, offered you 40 to 60 customers overnight? Yup, you'd be over the moon with that amount.. Well, you have the power to do that at any point.. Rather than increase income by that much (while increasing your costs), why not decrease your costs? Why not make a saving equal to you acquiring 40 or 60 customers? Downgrade that server into something more appropriate for your customer base. Not just to a VPS, but downgrade to a reseller hosting account.

We have some customers hosting 300 to 400 accounts with us spread across multiple servers using multiple reseller accounts. The same server that would cost you $400 a month to run and maintain, our customers have been able to reduce it to just roughly, $100 a month. And what if you factor in the support costs? If you outsource, you're looking at at least another $350 a month.. So a total of $750 a month to maintain a full server. With an InnoHosting reseller account, the support is included. We handle the support questions your customers send you under your brand name. Better yet, the option can be switched on and off instantly at anytime. You can handle support yourself, or let us do it.. Or mix & match it..

Total saving: $650 a month!

They don't need to worry about backups, pay license fees or any of that.. It's all managed and maintained. They don't need to do any worrying about the server being up, nor are they alone in the situation. They are rest assured knowing they can fall back on us. They know we are here with them and helping them through any disaster or downtime they encounter. They feel comfortable knowing they have a team with various skills & expertise which they can ask for help and come up with solutions.

Some may say there is a lack of control...This does have some truth. But you need to consider what control do you actually need? The software you need is installed, configured & set up, the features are included at our expense and popular scripts work fine.. Things that are disabled are things you will end up disabling yourself due to the security risks..

For a while now reseller web hosting by some has been perceived as not serious..But many look to the masses. The ones offering unlimited everything for next to nothing. Those environments aren't suitable for a web hosting business. You can't reliably run a web hosting business with a company offering large amounts of space etc. for $8 to $10 a month. It isn't viable.. You're going to be trusting your business with this company, is $8-$10 a serious amount for that company to even take their business seriously nevermind yours? They don't have a viable business model, they won't be in business for long.. They may be the flavour ofthe month, but that's as far as it will typically go. Good news is with InnoHosting, things are realistically priced, already managing thousands of reseller web hosting customers and have been in business for 6 years with a track history to prove it.

Especially with our reseller hosting accounts, we've included the bulk of what you need to get up and running quickly. Whether you're looking to sell web hosting as your main business or you're looking to offer it as an additional revenue stream. We have it all bundled in. The SSL certificate (RapidSSL) is included free, the support desk software is included free, the legal document side of things (terms of service etc.) is included, web site templates, support infrastructure, cPanel web hosting control panel, website builder, billing software (WHMCS and ClientExec) & much more. Things which would initially cost you hundreds and hundreds more to maintain are all bundled - free.

Let's look at costs you will have if you do it alone:
- Support costs (assuming you will outsource) - $350 a month
- Server costs - $300 a month
- License fees - $100 a month
- Server management - $150 a month
- Server backups - $150 a month
- Additional 3rd party software - $100 a month (ball park figure, it really depends on what you decide on).
Total monthly cost: $1,150 a month
It will cost you $1,150 a month for a decent web hosting set up. And that's not even including your time.

That is the bulk of your web hosting costs. In majority of cases, it is all of your web hosting costs.

So let's look at the things you cut down on by moving to an InnoHosting reseller web hosting account.
- Support costs (assuming you will outsource) - $0 a month
- Server costs - $26.95 a month (assuming you purchase a Professional reseller hosting account from InnoHosting)
- License fees - $0 a month
- Server management - $0 a month
- Server backups - $0 a month
- Additional 3rd party software - $0 a month (ball park figure, it really depends on what you decide on).
Total monthly cost: $26.95 a month
You save: $1,123.05 a month!

Imagine having an extra $1,123.05 a month to spend elsewhere or a treat for yourself. You can actually have all of this done within a few days.

Interested? Get in touch with us today.. Schedule a phone call and we'll design a migration strategy for you detailing how everything will be handled (we'll manage your server migration too).. Contact us at https://support.InnoHosting.com

Starting a Web Hosting Company - Obstacles

As with any company, you're going to run into obstacles. You will face new challenges almost every day, and how you deal with those challenges will determine if you come out stronger, or so damaged you end up closing up shop..

The key here is proper planning. From the very basics all the way to the most complex, you need to have a plan of action written down that you're going to follow. As you face each challenge, you would then be able to consult your strategy and deal with it logically.

For example, some challenges you will face:
- Drop in sales
- Increase in cancellations
- Shortage of funds
- Downtime
- Mistakes in service
- Angry customers
- Negative Reviews
- Downtime
- Increased Competition

Just to name a few. You can combat all of the above easily.. Let's take negative reviews for example. So long as you are providing a good service, are confident you have done everything in your power to ensure satisfaction, have been professional and offered resolutions to the customer, then you have nothing to worry about. In your plan of action, make sure you have a strategy for handling bad reviews, don't just go in all guns blazing.

A part of my process to maintain quality is making sure my attention is where it is needed most. I can't possibly monitor all tickets, and not all tickets require monitoring, however it is important you don't miss important tickets out.. A good filter I put in place, is monitoring tickets that have too many back & forth replies. If something isn't resolved within the first few replies, then typically, something is wrong. I will monitor those tickets and see why it is taking so long to resolve. I will go back and consult whoever worked on the ticket and ask why this is taking so long. I typically intervene at that point, implement a structured approach to resolution.

Let's take another example.. Increased competition. Competition is just a way of business. I know a few hosts, in particular one small mainly UK web host that seems obsessed with what we do. Going as far as copying our plan names word for word, our site structure, type of wording, services we offer and even under cutting the prices. Should we be worried? Nope, not at all. A company that copies is always one step behind. Always a minute too late in getting the sale. Lack innovation and shows their inability to come up with their own ideas. Only sees what's on the outside, but isn't aware of the internal processes which ensure we deliver what we promise. We need a little bit of a pinch to keep the heat on, increase our efforts and eliminate the competition. We have a plan of action which keeps such companies at bay. It is a good idea for you to have one too, as ultimately, you will one day face such a scenario too and it will be important for you to stay ahead of the game.. Web Hosting isn't an easy industry, it's not just about getting a reseller account and a website.. You need to make sure you can get the sale, you need to make sure you give your customers a better reason other than price to sign up with you.

Having a plan of action will ensure you are prepared and equipped to handle the many challenges you are going to face.