SOLVED Best approach to resellers?

[DennisMidjord]

Hi,

There's some things about resellers that I'm pretty confused about. What's the best approach to handle resellers?
When someone orders a reseller account, why is there also created a cPanel account? It implies to the client that they get what they paid for plus 1 extra. If you set the quota to 1MB, the account will be suspended quickly.
The account will also be setup with the "example.com". Now the client can't setup a new cPanel account through WHM with this domain, and he also can't use the already generated cPanel reseller account because there's not enough free disk space.

Why are resellers not just created without domains and without a cPanel account?

How do you guys manage resellers?

Update: Making the account own itself was what we were missing. Everything is how we want it after enabling that.

 

[rpvw]

Resellers are often a subject of much confusion.

Many times the roll of a Reseller is mistaken for that of an Agent (also often called an Affiliate)

A Reseller is an individual or company that rents an amount of space on your server for the purposes of hosting their own website selling hosting services and packages to their own clients AND for hosting however many of their own clients they can within the space they buy from you. They bill their clients themselves, and should support their clients themselves. They are normally free to set up and market their own packages and feature lists, and set prices that they think their market demographic will stand. They are granted special privileges in WHM to create and manage the accounts of their own clients (but should never be granted full administrative or root privileges)

Resellers are an integral part of WHM/cPanel if you choose to use it.

Guide to Reseller Accounts - cPanel Knowledge Base - cPanel Documentation

An Agent (or Affiliate) is someone who sells web hosting on your behalf (usually on commission) and all they do is feed you customers for you to sell to directly and that you then bill and support directly. The agent normally does not have their own website marketing web hosting services (but may have a website advertising other services like e.g. computer repair)

Agents (or Affiliates) are not catered for in WHM/cPanel, but are available for users of software like WHMCS

Affiliates - WHMCS Documentation

Hope this helps

 

[DennisMidjord]

Hi,

Thanks. What I'm talking about is resellers. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to handle them. When a client buys a reseller package, they usually buy something like 10 accounts, 15GB of space and 50GB of bandwidth. Then they can provision 15GB of space - but in order to use the cPanel account (the reseller account), they'd need additional disk space added, for example 1GB extra, and then the total is 16GB.
What I'm wondering is how do other hosts manage this? What I would have thought to be the best approach is this:
1. Client buys reseller package
2. No cPanel account is made
3. WHM account is setup using client's name plus first letter of surname or something like that
4. Reseller can then add a cPanel account for his own domain

That way there's no extra disk space needed.

 

[rpvw]

Does the following page help ?
Create a New Account - Reseller Settings - Version 74 Documentation - cPanel Documentation

 

[DennisMidjord]

Make the account own itself (the user can modify the account)
To allow the new reseller to own the account, select the Make the account own itself checkbox. This setting allows resellers to modify their own hosting packages, which include quotas and limits. It also causes the system to log bandwidth to that reseller’s account, rather than to the root account.

I'm guessing you wanted to point me in this direction. Thanks!

How would that work, though? If the reseller owns itself, is that one of the 10 accounts? Will the disk space on his cPanel account be used here?

 

[rpvw]

I didn't know you could specify how many "accounts" you allocated a reseller - I thought it was all about space, so if you allocated a reseller 10 GB, he could sell 10 x 1GB accounts, or 2 x 5GB accounts, or some combination etc at his discretion.

Assuming that the only pertinent allocation parameter is space, it is up to you if you include (and bill) the resellers hosting account in his allocated space, or not.

 

[DennisMidjord]

You can specify how many the reseller can make, and also allow overselling disk space. Even though he only has fx 10GB of disk space to provision, he can make 10 x 2GB disk space account. He'll only be able to actually use 10GB though.

I'll take a look at the 'make the account own itself' - I think it might do what we need.

 

[rpvw]

You can specify how many the reseller can make

I totally missed this feature , thank you for pointing it out.

I found the docs that detail it at Edit Reseller Nameservers and Privileges - Version 74 Documentation - cPanel Documentation

I wonder if Limit a reseller account by resource usage is what you are looking for ?

 

[DennisMidjord]

I wonder if Limit a reseller account by resource usage is what you are looking for ?

No, 'Make the account own itself' was what I was looking for. Now the cPanel account that gets created when setting up a reseller is owned by itself and is therefore included in the total disk space and number of accounts the reseller can create.
We've always set the reseller account to be owned by root, which means that the reseller had double the disk space (15GB to provision and 15GB on the reseller's cPanel account).

I've just now realised that we've been doing it wrong for years, lol.

 

[rpvw]

Glad you got it worked out, and thank you for your patience, and teaching me about several features as well.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

I'm happy to see the issue is now solved.

Thanks!