Hi jasoncruller,
Are these (grandfathered) plans going to be phased out in the future or continued infinitely?
We have many BR Resellers and when we did our survey over 80% of them noted that they planned to stay on the BR plans. So although we do not offer them any longer, we are supporting the current resellers and plan to continue to do so.
We currently have 8 BR servers. At this time, the numbers of accounts are fairly stable and in fact are up a little on some and down on others. Although some Resellers are moving to VPSes, this basically frees up space for other resellers to continue to grow. So I don't anticipate that we'll have to worry about consolidating servers for awhile.
At this time, the grandfathered accounts will continue indefinitely, but the future is hard to predict. I can tell you that we are very protective of our long term customers and tend to work hard at ensuring we keep them happy. I don't see a need at this time to consider phasing them out.
...Said that there are no changes to be made to the plans right now, but is there any forseeable change in the plans? Disk space, bandwidth, or otherwise?
At this time there is no plan to change the BR packages. We have only done minimal marketing analysis so far, but believe we are still within market on this type of account. However, we will be doing more in depth market studies to determine if we need to make any adjustments.
Keep in mind that you get what you pay for, e.g. if it sounds too good to be true, it very well could be. We won't make any changes that will compromise server performance. We've worked very hard over the last 6 months to improve and maintain server performance and will continue to have that as a priority. Consequently, although we will consider making changes, we will not improve the packages at the risk of impacting server performance.
As always, we do encourage and ask for feedback.
What will happen when the Bulk Reseller plans are updated with new servers?
Will multiple physical servers be consolidated into one physical server since it will be more powerful?
Would that require the master reseller account to change their nameservers at the registrar?
When we upgrade the hardware, the current plan is to replace each server. We are not consolidating any of the BR servers. We had considered adding another server and splitting off some accounts on a couple of servers with higher number of accounts, but many resellers have moved to VPS accounts and we no longer feel that is necessary.
When we move the accounts to the new server, as far as I know right now, there should be no changes to your account as it will be a server to server move for the BR servers.
Can I ignore my domains for a few months and expect that they will be running just like before with no changes needed on my part?
The nice thing about being on a shared server, is that other people hollar if the server is having performance issues. We do monitor the services also, so if any service fails, there are alerts that go out and the techs work the problem and get the service back online. But sometimes customers notice things that simple monitoring misses. Please do keep in mind, however, that not all problems are server related. Your site needs to be kept secure by using common security measures, e.g. secure passwords, no folders with worldwritable permissions, secure/updated scripts. Most of the problems experienced on a shared server are due to site compromises, not server compromises. Ownership of a hosting account does come with some responsibility. :huh: On the same note, our technicians review our servers daily to watch for any type of abuse. They will notify you if they find anything suspicous on your site.
It's the instability that I am wondering about.
Discontinuing a product does not necessarily equate to instability. Auto dealers discontinue their models on a regular basis, but still continue to service them. Most consumer products are regularly updated and /or discontinued depending on market and profitability. Products need to meet customer expectations but also need to be profitable.
The BR accounts are very difficult to manage and at the same time keep server performance stable because there are so many unlimited resources. The only constraint is that you cannot over allocate disk quota. Finding the right mix of profitability and performance is very difficult with a Bulk product, since it is much more difficult to control the number of accounts on a server.
A VPS is a much better product for a Reseller as they are more private, more secure and more suited to Web Hosting. The VPS can be configured and oversubscription is allowed. If a reseller uses too many resources, only his environment is impacted, not other resellers. VPSes were not as advanced and/or affordable at the time we introduced the BR accounts.
That does not mean there is not a market for BR accounts...you and our other BR Customers have proven there is. Heavens, why wouldn't there be with so much unlimited resources. But that market may come at a high price (quality), so we discontinued offering it. Having said that, we do believe that our current BR servers are performing extemely well and when the Hardware upgrades are done, they should perform even better, but profitability is lower than any of our other products. (but still profitable, so we want to keep all of our current BR's).
For customers who are not Web Hosts, but want more domains, we now have 'addon' domains to our shared hosting packages. Although the number is limited, we can easily manage numbers of accounts and better manage quality of performance on the servers.
I probably gave you way too much info, but hopefully this information has been helpful. We do want feedback from our Resellers, so don't be shy.
Sincerely,
Pat
