Fasthosts reseller hosting

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1 Fasthosts reseller hosting Hints & tips We re always looking for new ways to help you get the most out of your reseller hosting account. This guide provides ideas to maximise profit using your Fasthosts reseller tools, products and services. - Money-making tips - Package creation tips - Reducing your support overheads

2 Money-making tips for Fasthosts resellers The Fasthosts reseller account provides all the tools you need to offer tailored solutions for your customers, whilst earning you a healthy profit. We ve put together a few money-making hints and tips to get you started. Bandwidth quotas Set a monthly bandwidth quota for each hosted website that you set up for a customer. Bandwidth is completely free and unlimited with the Fasthosts reseller account, so you can create your own quotas and set your own pricing. If a customer exceeds their quota, you can charge them for the additional bandwidth used. o Tip: Set up bandwidth alerts to notify you when a customer approaches or exceeds their quota. Web space quotas The Fasthosts reseller account includes unlimited web space, enabling you to set your own quotas for your customers, then charge an upgrade fee when they need more. o Tip: By setting up custom FTP accounts for your customers, you can define a maximum web space quota that they can use. When your customer requests more space, simply increase the quota for the FTP account and charge your upgrade fee. Discounted product bundle When you add a hosted domain to your reseller account, we offer a great value product bundle representing a significant discount on individual component pricing. The product bundle comprises: o MatrixStats advanced website statistics tool (usually 10pa) o 3 Advanced POP3 mailboxes (usually 10pa each) o Control panel for your customer (usually 5pa) Bundle price 29.95pa representing a saving of over 30% (usual total 45pa) The bundle is only available when you add the hosted domain, so it pays to take advantage of the discount at this time. This effectively means that you can provide your customer with their own control panel and MatrixStats tool, at no extra cost to you. Plus you ll have 3 Advanced mailboxes for your customer to use each with 1GB space, virus & spam protection, Webmail and roaming SMTP.

3 Domain name discounts If you register and manage domain registrations for your customers, you can save money by purchasing domain credits. You pay discounted prices for credits (the more you buy the bigger the discount) then redeem them when you register domains. Plus, domain credits also save you money on renewals, as well as new registrations. Domain discounts mean that you can sell domains at competitive prices whilst still making a profit. o Tip: You can save even more by registering or renewing international domains, including.com,.net and org, for 10 years at a discounted rate. Encourage your customers to secure their domain names for the maximum registration period. Mailbox space quotas Standard and Advanced mailboxes have expandable storage space quotas, enabling you to add more space instantly when your customers need it. Standard mailboxes come with 20MB; Advanced mailboxes come with 1GB. Simply monitor each customer s mailbox usage in your control panel and then encourage them to buy an upgrade plan when they approach their quota. Resell Microsoft Exchange business-class With the Fasthosts reseller account you can resell full Microsoft Exchange to your customers, without the expensive hardware outlay or ongoing maintenance costs, putting you ahead of the competition. Simply add Exchange mailboxes instantly in your control panel for 4.99pm (or 49.99pa). That s 15pa less than we sell Exchange mailboxes to our direct retail customers ( 64.99pa). Key features: o 2GB mailbox with advanced virus & spam protection. o Free Microsoft Outlook software with each mailbox. o Outlook Web Access professional Webmail. o Centralised storage never lose or contacts again. o Revolutionary real-time push mobile access. o Free mailbox control panel for your customer reduce your support overheads. o White-label your customers won t know that Fasthosts are behind your service. o Mix and match Exchange and POP3 mailboxes on the same domain to suit your customers exact requirements. Tip: Outlook Web Access is Microsoft s professional Webmail interface, with built-in shared calendars, tasks and contacts. OWA provides a powerful upsell message from POP3 Webmail products - and being Microsoft branded, it can easily be offered under your own identity.

4 Package creation tips Our comprehensive options are designed to make it easy for you to build your own solutions and choose the products and services that are relevant to your customers. This "mix and match" approach means you only pay for the services your customers require without paying for products that they don't need. We recommend building bespoke solutions for your customers, tailored precisely for their exact needs. The reseller control has been designed with this proven successful model in mind. If you re looking to offer a suite of pre-designed packages for your customers to choose from, we ve put together some useful tips to help you achieve maximum profit. Factor-in % take-up Not all customers will need all the products and features that you include in a package. This is an important factor when designing your packages you do not need to build in the full cost of add-on products for every package you sell. Figures used in the examples below are strictly for illustration purposes only. Example 1 Include SiteBuilder with your hosting packages Remember you will only need to pay the SiteBuilder fee (from 10pa) for customers that request SiteBuilder once they have purchased the package. You may find that only 40% of your customers may actually need SiteBuilder other customers may simply use FTP (no cost) to upload their website files. Example: You sell 20 hosting packages at 50pa each, adding 1000 to your top-line. If only 40% of these customers require SiteBuilder, you ll only pay 80 (8 x 10pa). Disregarding other paid-for products you may include for now, you ve already made 920. Example 2 Include a free blog with your hosting packages Fully-featured instant blogs are available in your reseller account from just 5 pa. If you bundle a Starter blog with your hosting packages, you may find that only 10% of customers actually take up the blog once they have purchased a package. Using the same example as above, you sell 20 hosting packages at 50pa each ( 1000 total). If only 10% of these customers request a blog, you ll only pay 10pa.

5 Combining the two examples above, bundling SiteBuilder and a Starter blog with a 50pa hosting package could potentially earn you 910 profit if you sell 20 packages, and that s just the start! You could also consider this approach with other value-add products such as TrafficDriver, password protection, SSL, ASP.NET 2.0, FrontPage Extensions, MatrixStats, MySQL / MS SQL databases and Load balancing. Web space and bandwidth are completely free and unlimited for Fasthosts resellers. Plus, resellers benefit from a wide range of free products and features that you can bundle or resell to create a suite of packages. Free products and features for resellers Mix and match products to create a tiered range of attractive and profitable hosting packages. Unlimited web space o Tip: Set a web space quota for each package that you sell, providing an upsell and upgrade path with more web space included with higher-end packages. Unlimited bandwidth o Tip: Set a bandwidth quota for each package and charge for additional bandwidth used over the quota. Set up alerts so you know when your customers are approaching their quotas. Unlimited Windows & Linux websites o Tip: Offer your customers their choice of Windows or Linux platforms, at no extra cost to you. You could consider charging a small premium for Windows hosting. Unlimited sub-domains o Tip: While some providers only allow sub-domains as forwarders, sub-domains in the Fasthosts reseller account are fully hosted independent domains with their own website and facilities. Unlimited FTP accounts o Tip: Set up access rights for your customers to access specific folders with granular file permissions. Use a tiered approach with your entry-level package including one FTP account, with more FTP accounts bundled with higher packages.

6 Custom error pages for each hosted website o Tip: Include custom error pages with your high-end packages as an upsell message or an incentive to upgrade. Free professional stock images + 20% discount deal for each customer o We ve worked with Fotolia.co.uk to create a white-label deal on professional stock images that you can pass onto your customers at no extra cost to you. Simply send your customers to Raw log files (real-time stats tool also available) ASP, PHP, Perl, and Python scripting included (ASP.NET 2.0 also available) Secure Shell access (SSH) for Linux hosting. ODBC - Open Database Connectivity (Windows) Website forwarding & masking no adverts and no Fasthosts branding o Tip: we provide a white-label holding page for domain names that you register and park in your reseller account. To use your own branded holding page, simply use website masking to forward domain names to a page on your website. Unlimited Standard POP3 mailboxes compatible with all popular mail software o Tip: Use a tiered approach, including more mailboxes with your high-end packages than your entry-level package. Strengthen your offering with forwarders (free), Advanced mailboxes and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. Unlimited forwarders and auto-responders New- SMS alerts for all mailboxes and forwarders. o Tip: We provide a basic and advanced version both of which are free for resellers. The Advanced version provides greater control, enabling your customers to specify the senders and subject lines that trigger alerts. You could consider bundling the basic option for free and charge extra for the advanced option.

7 Reduce your customer support overheads In addition to creating bespoke solutions for your customers, reducing your customer support overheads can help to increase the profitability of your reseller hosting business. The Fasthosts approach, providing maximum web-based control for our customers, has proven a highly successful model. So, we ve designed tools to enable Fasthosts resellers to benefit in the same way. Customer self-management Build your own control panels using our API o Exclusively designed for Fasthosts resellers, our powerful hosting API enables you to build your own fully featured customer control panels and signups processes, integrated seamlessly with your own website. The API is highly flexible, enabling you to provide a high level of control and automation for your customers. White-label hosting control panels o We offer a range of ready-made control panels for your customers, enabling them to manage their own services without needing to contact you. You choose the level of control your customer has - configuration options include: settings including spam filtering and Webmail access. Change FTP and Microsoft FrontPage passwords. Set up and configure ODBC data sources. Set up and configure password protected folders. View website usage statistics (MatrixStats tool required). White-label mailbox control panels o Enable your customers to control their own settings with a standalone control panel for each mailbox. Reduce your inbound support calls for everyday requests including: Mailbox password changes. Spam filter settings including white-lists and block-lists. Set up and configure forwarding. Auto-reply (e.g. Out of office) messages. o client setup details are included in mailbox control panels, making it easy for your customers to configure their own desktop software without having to contact you.

8 SiteBuilder easy website creation tool o Your customers create and update their own professional websites with no HTML skills needed. The tool includes hundreds of customisable designs, powerful addon features and comprehensive built-in help files. Simply activate the service then pass it on to your customer no HTML files to set up just point and click! o Tip: Custom brand SiteBuilder with your own logo and colour scheme FREE TrafficDriver search engine optimisation control panel o Our search engine submission and optimisation tool, TrafficDriver, comes complete with a white-label control panel enabling your customers to activate and easily use the service themselves. What s more, we ve created a white-label TrafficDriver user guide for you to pass on to your customers when you set up the service. MatrixStats - white-label website statistics tool o Set up MatrixStats for your customers websites, enabling them to track their own website usage, referrers and much more, including automated reports, without needing to contact you regularly for the information. White-label blog control panels o Other reseller hosting providers may allow you to set up blogs by manually installing scripts and databases. With the Fasthosts reseller account you can also activate fully-featured blogs instantly, with absolutely no technical effort required. Your customers then update their blogs with a separate Blogware control panel. White-label support tools White-label user guides We provide a wide range of white-label user guides and manuals for popular products and services. Simply pass these on to your customers when you provide them with a service, to reduce your how-to support enquiries. White-label system status page Create your own dynamically updated system status page integrated seamlessly into your website, with our white-label RSS feed, designed exclusively for Fasthosts resellers. You ll find our system status RSS feed on the reseller support website. We hope you have found our hints and tips useful. If you have any comments or additional ideals that you would like to share with other resellers, please them to feedback@fasthosts.co.uk