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Resellers

A reseller is an account that may create customer accounts of its own. You give it a reseller plan; everything it sells comes out of that plan. This page covers how to make one, how its allowance works, and how to step into its panel. The reseller's own side is in Getting started as a reseller.

How the model works

  • A reseller plan has two kinds of numbers. The pool is shared by the reseller and all its customers. The ceiling is the most any one account under the reseller may have.
  • Resellers sit on the administrator side of the panel. Their customers sign in on the customer panel.
  • There is one level only. A reseller is never another reseller's customer.

Make a reseller plan

Reseller plans are made like any other plan, under Accounts › Packages. Open the form and set Type to Reseller — may create accounts.

What the figures mean on a reseller plan:

  1. Disk (MB), Web traffic and Accounts (reseller only) are the pool. The reseller and every customer share them. When the transfer pool is used up, new accounts and bigger plans are refused, sites keep serving, and each account's own allowance still applies. You and the reseller are told by email once a month while it stays used up.
  2. CPU, Memory and Processes are also shared by the reseller and all its customers together. Ten customers do not each get a full allowance.
  3. Every other figure (files, mail per hour, the counts of sites, databases and so on) is the ceiling. It is the most any one of the reseller's accounts may have, the reseller's own account included.
  4. Customers with a dedicated IP (reseller only) is how many of the reseller's customers may be on a plan that includes one. 0 means none.

The reseller can write its own plans for its customers. Each must fit under the ceiling, including a 0 on a count where your ceiling is a finite number. Smaller plans are fine; that is how a reseller makes a cheap tier. A reseller sees and uses only its own plans, not yours and not another reseller's.

Lowering a reseller plan later first lists the resellers' own plans it would bring down. Confirm only if you want that. See Plans and performance for the limits themselves.

Overselling

Tick Reseller may oversell on the plan to let the reseller sell plans that add up to more disk than the pool holds. The panel's own hint puts it this way: "They may promise more disk than they hold, never use more." Without it, a sale that would pass the pool is refused.

  • What the reseller and its customers actually use together may never pass the pool, with or without overselling. Once the pool is full, nothing in it can grow, and databases become read-only. Sites keep working and files can be deleted.
  • Overselling is also a server-wide switch in Basic setup. If it is off there, the checkbox is disabled and says so.
  • Server overselling does not enlarge a reseller's allowance. The two are separate.

Features a reseller may pass on

These are options on the reseller plan. A reseller can pass a feature on to its customers only if its own plan has it.

  • SSH access: accounts may switch on a shell confined to their own files.
  • Server backups and Customers' own backups: whether the plan's accounts are in the server's backups, and whether customers make their own.
  • Reseller backs up customers to its own remote: lets the reseller send its own account and its customers' to its own SFTP, FTP, S3 or Google Drive. It is an extra copy; nothing is kept on this server. See Reseller backups.
  • Containers and Container applications.
  • Includes a dedicated IP: the reseller gets one address and all its accounts use it. This needs a free address in Server › Network.
  • AI: switched per plan on Accounts › AI access (AI connections) and Accounts › AI assistant, and only while AI access is on for the server. See AI.

Create a reseller

  1. Open Accounts › Create an account.
  2. In step 1, enter the domain and email. Leave the username and password blank to have them made for you; you see them once, on the next screen.
  3. In step 2, pick a plan that shows the reseller tag. The plan sets the account's type.
  4. Create it. The reseller signs in on the administrator side with these details.

The account list has a Resellers filter. A reseller's page has a Customers tab with its own account and every customer together: disk, files, memory and CPU, live.

Create a customer for a reseller

You can also create an account for a reseller. In Accounts › Create an account, step 3 has Owned by. Pick the reseller. Its plan limits then apply to the new account, and the sale is checked against the reseller's pool.

Move an account to a reseller

  1. Open the account from Accounts › All accounts.
  2. Click Change owner….
  3. Under New owner, pick The administrator or a reseller, then click Change owner.

The account counts against the new reseller's plan: its disk, the account count and its transfer. The move is refused if it does not fit. Its CPU, memory and processes join the reseller's pool. If the move cannot finish at once, the panel says so and retries.

Only a shared account can be moved. A reseller cannot be moved, and a reseller that still has customers cannot be changed to another type.

Log in as a reseller, then as a customer

  1. Open the reseller's account page and click Log in as.
  2. You now see the reseller's panel. A Back to button in the top bar returns you to yours. Anything you change is changed on that account.
  3. From the reseller's Customers, you can open one of its customers the same way. The top bar then takes you back to the reseller, and one more click returns you to your own panel.

You cannot log in as a suspended account. Unsuspend it first.

What a reseller can and cannot do

A reseller can:

  • Create, suspend and delete its own customers, within its pool.
  • Write its own plans, import its own customers, and set its own branding.
  • Use its own hosting account like a customer.

A reseller cannot:

  • Change server settings. Those stay with you.
  • See another reseller's accounts or plans.
  • Pass the pool or the ceiling, even with overselling on.
  • Become a customer of another reseller.