Advice on 3 Reseller Hosts - Stablehost vs Veerotech vs Site5

[msingle]

Hi. Sorry for the first post being so long.

I am moving my reseller account elsewhere after a many year, happy relationship with my current host took a turn for the worse.

I am fairly new to the reseller business but not to webhosting. I'm not sure about location being important but my situation is that I live between Asia and the USA and plan to eventually get some Asian customers - specifically Taiwan but expand later maybe. My USA clients are based either in the far west or deep south but again have plans to have them in a lot more places.

I don't really have special requirements. I would like the end user to be able to build an HTML site through a webbuilder but that isn't a deal killer if not. Besides that I'm looking for the basics: stability, responsive support, private name servers, speed, etc.

Based on research I've come to 2 main choices and perhaps 3 and would like some input if possible about what would be the best for me.

1. Veerotech. Would probably sign up for the lowest level reseller plan to start. I've talked to the owner a couple times but a little worried about their size because I've been burned before by smaller hosts. But I like his responsive attitude. One friend told me they quit Veerotech because of awfully slow servers. Another told me the wouldn't change and were happy but there were apparently some chronic email issues of some sort.

They have a Black Friday deal of 40% off so their package would be about $10 for 20 GB, 500 GB bandwidth, 20 customers, no billing software. UK and several US server locations.

2. StableHost. They have a deal where you get a free upgrade to the next level for the same price. So I would pay for the lowest level but get the middle level. They also have an HTML site builder but I've never used it (coming from a HSphere control panel) so I'm not sure if it's really helpful or not. Of course people complain about them too.

Again about $10 for unlimited bandwidth, 20 GB space, 50 customers. Not sure about the billing software because they don't explain features very well on their site. Phoenix and Amsterdam servers.

3. Site5 ( I only list them because they have servers in Asia but they are more expensive than the current deals with the first two hosts. Again now sure how important server location is for a newbie reseller.) I don't really want to pay more since I'm just getting started but don't want to limit myself either on the locations if it's important. Note that the Asian customers are probably still a while away - not immediately.

$24 for 50 GB space and 500 GB bandwith, unlimited clients, and billing software included. Not sure about their proprietary control panel.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Edit: I know that on this site Veerotech is listed as the best reseller host but I'm not sure if that is current or not.

[kpmedia]

Since you want to take advantage of Black Friday deals, I'll be brief:

Site builders are always useless. Nobody has anything special, and they just use what comes with Softaculous, Fantastico or Installatron. They're very limited, and really can't help you do much. You'd do better with WordPress, or even just a simple HTML program on your own computer. I could make better sites back in the 90s, compared to "site builders", and we had some primitive tools back then!

Living in Asia would indeed make Site5 a better choice, but you can always migrate later, once the customers exist. For now, west coast USA would be ideal, meaning Stablehost is the best bet.

So that's my advice here.

_______

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[msingle]

Thanks for the feedback. However, Stablehost only had 2 server locations available upon starting the signup process - Amsterdam and Phoenix.

On their network page it says they have a center in Chicago but maybe that's not available now or available to me or??

So I backed out of the signup process so I could clarify my decision and this issue.

[kpmedia]

Phoenix is the west coast. That's the one you want.

[Brent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by msingle

1. Veerotech. Would probably sign up for the lowest level reseller plan to start. I've talked to the owner a couple times but a little worried about their size because I've been burned before by smaller hosts. But I like his responsive attitude. One friend told me they quit Veerotech because of awfully slow servers. Another told me the wouldn't change and were happy but there were apparently some chronic email issues of some sort.

They have a Black Friday deal of 40% off so their package would be about $10 for 20 GB, 500 GB bandwidth, 20 customers, no billing software. UK and several US server locations.

Hi there,

I'd like to touch on the above quote a bit - periodically, our outgoing filtering can have some issues. This can be any number of problems, wording of the emails, attachments or an issue that's on our end. I'm not going to sweep it under the rug, we've had our fair share of issues just as any other host over the past 4 years.

As for slow servers, occasionally we may have a load spike, backup job hang etc however, the majority of the time we find it's a website that has 25+ Wordpress plugins that "must" all be used. In some cases, the site is just not a good fit for shared hosting and constantly maxes out the resources allocated to it.

As far as our size, yes, we are a smaller company however, we are pushing roughly 20,000 websites across our servers. Yes, that may sound small compared to some other large companies however, for a smaller company of our size, it's a good amount of websites that we host. In addition, relative to other companies of our size, we own outright, the majority of our servers, especially ALL equipment located here in Raleigh.

[kpmedia]

I have more time today, so I'll be un-brief.

All 3 of the hosts you're looking at are excellent, and we use them all.

And yes, the list is current. (It will receive another major update in December, however. And Arvixe will be removed at that time, since it was bought by EIG; we have lots of stuff to change because of it.)

About Veerotech:

I don't really consider Veerotech "small", if you ignore the EIG/Godaddy monsters. Small is kiddie hosts and amateur hosts -- people that have no idea what they're doing, and should not be in business (and many are not, only pretending to be a company). Those are the folks that are desperate for customers, and losing one can hurt severely. That's not Veerotech.

Veerotech is a "medium sized" company, with several locations, several employees, and a solid infrastructure.

They use SpamExperts for email filtering, and it is absolutely wonderful. I have it on two personal accounts for testing. I looked in the backend today, and scanned the quarantine. There were 0 false negatives (not-spam seen as spam), 8 false positives (spam seen as not-spam, which I reported to SE), and 3500+ (PER MONTH!!!) spams removed. Spam has gotten so bad in 2014, that it completely overran my filtering abilities, and I'm not a novice. I just could not cope, and began using Veerotech for email services as well. I've not seen any problems for the past 2+ months, since I began using it.

Veerotech uses CloudLinux, so server slowdowns are infrequent, and caused by other issues -- hardware, network, backup processing, etc. Other hosts would probably have servers go down entirely, not just go slow. Part of that is due to CL, and part of it is due to the management of Veerotech NOT overloading their servers.

Sadly, I think the east coast (NC) is too far away for Asian traffic. For that, Asia is best, with USA west coast being the runner-up choice. EU, India and Africa would be not-optimal choices as well.

[msingle]

After a week away on business, I wanted to update this thread.

I went with Stablehost - only for one reason and that was the direct recommendation of the owner (sorry not sure your real name but KPMedia). I've seen and followed their posts and recommendations for a while on WHT as well as the Warrior Forum.

I've seen basically nothing but good about Veerotech. I know that every hosting company has pros and cons and happy and unhappy customer scenarios. I've been impressed by Brent's answers to me and his willingness to help on the WF.

At some point a decision has to be made and many times that decision is between 2 practically equal choices. So I went with the west coast thing for my current needs based on the recommendation.

If plans start coming together as I hope, many of my future local business clients will be based in the southeast USA. At that time I will add a Veerotech account because based on the same recommendation, Raleigh is closer to Tampa/Tallahassee/Atlanta/Jacksonville than Phoenix.

Also I've noticed that apparently Stablehost doesn't have a billing solution. Not sure how to handle that except to do it all manually. Ideas?

Thanks.

[kpmedia]

If you're planning to use the account for reselling hosting, and need a billing panel, you can add your own. The host does not have to provide it, though some do. Stablehost does not give out "free" billing panels, which is why their plan costs less.

For example, you can get the license for Blesta and ClientExec from LicensePal, and install it yourself.
For WHMCS, you have to buy it directly from them.

It's no harder than installing any other PHP/MySQL script (WordPress, etc).

Although we're currently not "a host", we do use an online billing and support panel for our clients. Before you jump on the WHMCS bandwagon, I suggest you give Blesta a consideration. It's a excellent panel, very easy to use, and has better security. (If you read any negatives about it online, see when the complain was. The current version has only been out for a few months, and it now does most everything that WHMCS can.)

It sounds like you're set for your USA locations, between Stablehost and Veerotech.

If you ever need EU locations, then look at WebhostingBuzz (UK), EuroVPS (NL), and the EU locations also offered by the above two hosts.