Reseller account
Hi There.
I have had the reseller account for about 6 months now, and as far as providing, and controlling basic hosting facilites such as email accounts, web hosting etc via their "extend" administrator control panel, I can say .. so far everything has been OK.
You can setup different "hosting" packages, so for lo-cost customers you could say provide only 1- 5 email accounts, limit webspace, restrict add ons such as content management (joomla, wordpress etc etc etc are included), limit to one mysql data base etc and for meduim spend customers create a higher level spec hosting package, i.e more email accounts, more add ons, more mysql data bases etc and so on up to the "full house" with all feaures enabled
The overall package seems good value for money, but one thing I will NOT do is put any domains with Heart as a "domain registrar".
They seem to want to "make" you either buy the domain from them, or transfer the domain to them as the "registrar" ....... making it sound like this gives you better control etc etc.
I made it quite clear to heart before I purchased the reseller package that this is what I would do, i.e buy domains eleswhere, (as I am a Nominet registrar, i.e my own IPS tag, and I also have an account with srsplus.com for .com's .org's .net's etc etc ) and they said this would be OK
When you buy domains separately, you create within your "control panel" a domain "association" which "adds" that domain to your panel, to which you link one of your hosting packages as I described above.
Now this has worked OK, EXCEPT in a few cases where I found I was unable to edit DNS .... and this was due to Heart's system of adding domains to the control panel NOT getting a valid "whois" for those domains, becuase I had only just registered them elswhere.
I only found out all this by raising a fault ticket (you CANT speak to support, which I think is a SERIOUS drawback), and Heart then telling me that "becuase I had not registered the domain with them ...... you can't edit DNs etc etc - to which I replied that I had SPECIFICALLY raised this BEFORE purchasing the package ..... and so .... after rasing the issue on their second level support ..... the issue was resolved after they "manually" added them.
And so ....
THIS is my main concern with Heart.
Because, As have my own ISP business, with our own servers, nominet IPS tag, our own account with srsplus.com for other domains etc etc, I became irritated by their front line support not "listening" to my genuine concerns (of which their have been not that many to be fair)
That is, as a time served engineer, I dont raise a fault ticket unless I'm sure, and have definitive evidence of a problem. - AND I DON'T expect to have to argue my corner to get something done when I KNOW the fault's NOT my END!
I get the impression that maybe they feel that most of their customers are largely "inexperienced" (probably becuase of the price) - and don't therefore take too much notice at first - as I'm sure a lot of the time they probably do get a lot of ***t ...
Anyway, worth a try, at least on a Monthly basis,
But I wouldn't put all domains with them straight away, and I would also advise buying and controlling domains elswhere, as that gives you external control over domain registration, renewal etc.
Hope this helps,
eric-isp, (West Midlands UK)
