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Last modified: 26 Dec 2007
Resellers in H-Sphere have virtually independent hosting systems
to resell hosting resources and services. Resellers can't have
resellers of their own.
This document explains the main aspects of resellers in H-Sphere:
Plans
Unlike in other control panels, resellers in H-Sphere don't resell
your plans. Rather, they sell your hosting resources
such as disk space, traffic, mailboxes, etc. at retail prices,
and are charged for them at wholesale prices. In other
words, you set wholesale prices and allow your resellers to group
your resources into their own plans and define their own retail prices
for them. Resellers aren't charged for any resource until
their end-users come and buy them at retail price. This
makes resellers full-featured hosting providers with
complete freedom in developing their own sales policies and
creating hosting plans that are totally different from yours
by prices and combination of resources.
Dual Nature of Resellers
A reseller in H-Sphere has a dual nature, which is incorporated in two
control panels and, respectively, two H-Sphere accounts. On the one hand,
a reseller is a user to the system and has a reseller account
holding reseller's contact info, billing info, and online invoices.
On the other hand, as administrator to their customers and distributor
of hosting services, a reseller has a reseller administrative account,
which is created from inside the reseller account. Reseller administrative
account allows distributing hosting resources and services at retail prices.
In simpler words, end user accounts are created under the
reseller admin account, which, in its turn, is created under
reseller account (H-Sphere before 3.0).
 In H-Sphere 3.0+,
Reseller Admin CP is created automatically when reseller signs up for a plan. It doesn't show up in search results which prevents this account
from unintentional deletion.
Private Label
With the reseller admin CP, each reseller gets a private
label hosting system, which makes admin completely invisible to
the end customer including at signup and domain registration.
Resellers can have their own independent control panel URL, DNS
server names, host names for mail, web, sql, and other servers,
company information, and all other properties that make them
look as totally independent hosting companies. Furthermore, reseller
control panels are inaccessible by IP, which excludes the possibility
of accidental or intentional visits to your control panel.
Look and Feel and Regional Settings
With their admin control panels, resellers can customize the
default look and feel of their users' control panels. They can change
colors, replace all control panel images with those of their own, edit
many texts, change the default control panel language and the currency
of end user payments, enable and disable skins, set default skins for
new accounts, etc.
With their reseller control panels, resellers can change the
skin and language of their reseller control panels only.
Merchant Gateways
Resellers are independent in configuring credit card processors
and web payment systems. To accept credit cards, resellers must
register their own accounts at the credit card processing centers
and configure their merchant gateways, just like it is done by
master admin.
Domain Registration
For resellers to offer domain registration services, master admin needs
to set up a connection with a supported domain registration provider and
set wholesale domain registration prices for supported TLDs in the reseller
plan. Resellers can't create their own registrar connections. They can
only set retail domain registration prices for the TLDs configured by master
admin.
Providing Support
Resellers in H-Sphere have their own independent support centers.
Ticket Center. Each reseller has a fully-featured ticket center
to answer trouble tickets from end customers. The administrator receives
only internal system error notifications that are related to the server
configuration. If necessary, the administrator can
provide support to resellers' end users.
Knowledge Base. Knowledge bases owned by resellers are separate
from those owned by master admin.
Control Panel
Resellers acquire almost all administrative features offered by H-Sphere,
except Logical/Physical Server management and related reports, Miva and
Urchin License Management, creating sub-resellers, and viewing summary
info for the whole hosting system.
Web, Mail, and SQL Resources
Resellers don't have web, mail, and SQL resources. Both reseller
and reseller admin accounts are only logical entities of the
control panel and DNS, and don't have corresponding accounts on web, mail, or
SQL servers. To set up a website, a mailbox, or a database, a reseller Starting from H-Sphere 3.0
reseller administrative CP is created authomatically
when reseller sign's up for a plan. It doesn't show up in search results which prevents this account
from inententional deletion. Reseller now won't be able to login to his resller administrative account from
the login page and will have to first login to his top reseller account.
needs to create an end user account with appropriate resources enabled.
Servers
Resellers' customers are automatically distributed across web, mail,
and SQL servers, and their home directories are created next to the
directories of admin's direct end users. If necessary, resellers can be
placed on separate boxes.
SSL
CP SSL. H-Sphere offers SSL protection for reseller control panels
based on service IPs or ports.
More >>
Shared SSL. Resellers can install wildcard ssl certificates to
protect their customers' websites running on third level domains.
More >>
Inherited SSL. Resellers can offer SSL protection using admin's
wildcard certificates.
More >>
Billing
Every time the system creates a billing log entry for a reseller's customer,
it also creates a shadow billing log entry for the reseller. The two entries
show two different amounts, because they use retail and wholesale prices respectively.
When reseller's customers acquire resources over free quotas allocated to the
reseller, the reseller is charged the wholesale amount. When reseller's customers
are refunded, the corresponding wholesale refund amount is credited to the
reseller's account.
At the end of each day, the wholesale charges are summarized by type, and a
separate bill is created for each type of resources. As the result, resellers
don't see these charges until the next day.
More on billing resellers.
Markup plans
(H-Sphere 3.0 +)
Markup plans are plans with pre-defined set of resources created based on other hosting plans
to be resold by resellers or main host administrator. Billing for markup plans works the same way as for
other plans. If a markup plan is resold by reseller, fees are collected from reseller as described in
Billing Resellers.
To create a markup plan, see Creating and Editing Plans.
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