How You’ll Allocate Server Resources
When offering your reseller hosting services, you’ll typically offer resources based on what the user has agreed with you. These often depend on the hosting partner you choose, too, so it’s important to pick one that will help you meet the needs of your customers.
You should clearly outline the resources you’ll use for your servers, and explain how the client’s website operations might be impacted by this. By including this, your customers can determine whether they’ve chosen the right service or if they need to upgrade.
To help your clients pick the right service, it’s worth knowing how to determine server requirements for a website. Once you have this information, you’ll find it much easier to improve customer satisfaction.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Your service level agreement (SLA) is another thing that you mustn’t overlook in your reseller hosting. While some software companies only offer this feature to their enterprise customers, you should have an SLA for everyone – regardless of the plan they’re on.
In your SLA, you’ll outline everything that the customer can expect from you in terms of the service you shall offer them. Including your uptime is very important, and you should also outline what you’ll offer as compensation if you fall short of the mark. Be honest with what you can offer and adjust accordingly if this changes.
Besides an uptime guarantee, you should also use your SLA to outline any additional services. For example, the customer should know how you’ll provide support when needed. You can use many of the cloud SLA principles in the ones that you create for your clients.
Termination Procedures
Running a successful reseller hosting business means thinking about how you can maximize your customer lifetime value (CLV) and maintain relationships for as long as possible. However, you will sometimes need to end relationships with your clients – and vice versa. For this reason, it’s a good idea to include termination procedures and conditions.
Add each of the following to your contract:
What is the notice period for either party to terminate the contract?
Under what circumstances can you or the other person end the agreement?
How will you handle migration after the agreement ends?
What is your policy for time and data that hasn’t been used at the end of the contract?
As part of your termination process, it’s also important that you outline what’s expected of the client. For example, you may want them to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). In addition to outlining the conditions, you should mention how customers can cancel their contract – whether that’s by writing to you or through an alternative.
Governance
While reseller hosting is one of the best ways to make money as a digital nomad (or while working online in general), you’ll still be governed by a jurisdiction while working with customers. Most of the time, this will be where you’re based. However, you need to think more broadly.
You’ll likely work with customers in different countries, which can make things a bit more challenging. You should determine the governance you will follow while partnering with your clients, along with outlining some of the most important guidelines that both of you should consider.
As part of your agreements, you should also determine what currency you’ll bill the customer in. For international clients, USD and EUR make the most sense. But if you’re only based in Europe, you may want to use EUR (or GBP if you’re in the UK).
Server Locations
One of the most important (but overlooked) elements of being a hosting reseller is to choose the right physical location for your servers. You might be wondering why this is necessary, considering that most of your work will take place online – but the place in which your servers are located will determine site speed and overall customer satisfaction.
If you use servers based far away from where a client is located, it’ll be more difficult for them to deliver a great website experience. Slow websites frustrate customers more than most things, and they’ll struggle to have good retention rates as a result.
Another indirect impact of poor server locations is that they could affect where the website ranks in search results. Google and other search engines value the user experience, and site speed is a crucial factor.
To ensure that everyone is on the same page, you should make it very clear which server locations you offer in your contract. Much of this will depend on your hosting partner, which is why it’s a good idea to choose one that meets your needs in this area.
Regulatory Compliance
In addition to national regulations, you also need to think about how you comply with international rules. If you’re based in the EU or EEA, for example, you’ll need to adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Similar rules exist in Switzerland and the UK.
The GDPR requires you to take a proactive and sturdy approach to protecting consumer data, and other jurisdictions have similar rules. For example, you’ll need to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California.
Understanding the international rules you should comply with is important, and you should communicate these to your clients. Mention all of the related terms and conditions in your contract; you can typically use template generators for this.
Refund Policies
Refunds are an important talking point in every business, and reseller hosting is no different. No matter what you do, you can’t make everyone happy. Those who aren’t pleased with your services might want a refund, and for this reason, you need to outline these policies in your contracts.
It’s a good idea to identify your refund policies when a customer first joins. For example, it’s not uncommon to offer 30-day periods where users can get their money back if they wish. You may want to increase the period further if you wish to stand out compared to your competitors.
When developing refund policies, you must balance customer satisfaction with running a profitable business. You should also state whether certain conditions must be met for a refund; some providers offer no-questions-asked options, but this is not always the case.
