Hosting & Domain Reseller for public and clients

pavsid · 21st August 2008

Hi folks, glad i found this site -it looks very promising after browsing around countless other sites and offers etc etc and still not filling in the grey areas!..

I'm setting up a site mainly offering my web design/development services but also offering hosting and domain names. However, I also want the hosting and domain names to be available to the public who are not web design clients.

I obviously want the hosting to look as though its coming from me and so custom nameservers are preferable (last resort generic). The domains i understand will always display as the registrar but that's ok.

The main thing i want is for customers to be able to do all the searching of domains and purchasing on my website and customised control panels be available for both domain-only customers and hosting customers and all this to be set up in real time.

Is this do-able or am I expecting too much? Do any of you recommend any companies that can offer all this?

Many thanks in advance

HostOrca · 21st August 2008

A lot of companies do what you want.

You'll need a billing system like WHMCS (WHMCS - The Complete Client Management, Billing & Support System) which will take domain, hosting orders etc, provision them, bill them, etc,. it even has a built in support system.
Post your request in the Request for products or services section and you'll get a lot of offers

pavsid · 21st August 2008

Thanks, i'll do just that!

HostOrca · 22nd August 2008

Hope you find what your looking for

pavsid · 22nd August 2008

Thanks HostOrca,

Just one last question, WHMCS connects to the company's API right? (In order to register/set up the domain and account).

What allows customers to search for available domains on my website? Is that part of the API as well?

othellotech · 22nd August 2008

the simple answer would be " a domain lookup script "

WHMCS includes domain lookup through the whois services as part of the system , in addition to that you'll need one of more *registrars* to actually register the domains through

for .uk you'll want to use Nominet, or one of their registration-agents, or one of their reseller who provide an API to do the actual regsitrations, as Nominet "run" the whole of .uk

for .tv you'll want to use Enom or one of their resellers, as they run the Tuvalu Registration System

for .com there are various companies

for .ie you'll need to use IEDR or one of their resellers, as they run the .ie ccTLD

etc - most poeple dont want the level of overall "control" we do, and deal with just a few larger registration companies that themseleves have arrangements with the registries.

The one that works best with whmcs and some of the other billing systems is enom, closely followed by netearthone and a few others - you can "pick and chose" for each type of domain you want to offer, so if one provides as serice or facility that another doesnt but they only register 10 of the 270 domains types you want, then you can use them just for that 10 etc

othellotech · 22nd August 2008

or, you can always take the orders and process them *manually* through whichever domain registration company you chose to use if there's no API, but that very quickly becomes tedious

or you could write your own module for whatever sofwtare to use a registrars api

or ...

HostOrca · 22nd August 2008

othellotech beet me to it

Just to add though, if your hosting provider uses cpanel, plesk etc whmcs can setup the hosting account automatically as well.

pavsid · 25th August 2008

Some brilliant advice here folks, thanks a lot.

If i implemented one of these 'domain lookup scripts' and then took the order and processed it manually, what's the risk of the domain being registered by someone else before i got a chance to register it for them?

Also, i presume you'd have to tell the customer something like 'we use a carefully selected board of registrars' as their tag would show up in whois?

othellotech · 25th August 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by pavsid

If i implemented one of these 'domain lookup scripts' and then took the order and processed it manually, what's the risk of the domain being registered by someone else before i got a chance to register it for them?

It happens, particularly if the potential customer has used one of the less-reputable companies to do the lookup first - more and more I hear about people doing a lookup then coming back to register a day later and its gone ...