Email can be a major pain in the neck for Resellers!
A couple of years ago I blogged about The Problem With Email And Shared Hosting.
Basically that post states that if one bad apple on the same IP sends out unsolicited email (a/k/a Spam) the entire reputation of the IP is temporarily damaged.
To help mitigate this problem, we started assigning one free dedicated IP address to all customers who purchase a Corporate Hero Reseller account with us.
This IP address is only shared by your customers, helping to ensure the highest deliverability rate possible.
In some cases, customers will chose to buy a separate dedicated IP address for a specific client, to ensure there is only ONE client on the IP, for $29.95/year.
Using Third Party Providers
Despite this solution, some customers still wish to use third party email providers such as G Suite or Zoho Mail to serve their email.
Both G Suite and Zoho are known to have very high deliverability rates as well as friendly user interfaces with tons of features to help protect against Spam and stay organized.
I actually recommend customers that have high volumes of emails to go this route.
Since these products specifically specialize in email, they're able to offer a much more robust and redundant solution than we can.
We make integration with both of these products a breeze. Just recently, I typed an updated guide for How To Setup G Suite Email At NameHero.
Reselling Third-Party Email Solutions
For a while, we were Reselling G Suite here at NameHero.
Unfortunately we made the decision to stop as it didn't make sense for us in terms of the return vs. support ratio.
For example, we would resell one G Suite account for $5, the same price as Google charged directly. Our cost on the account, was $4.25 per user through Enom.
The back-end to the system was VERY limited therefore it was next to impossible for our support team to offer the caliber of support we're known for here at NameHero.
Not only that, we found the Enom WHMCS module to be very clunky (despite beta testing it for them several years ago) and an overall lack of interest from their development team.
Therefore with a $0.75 margin, less credit card processing fees, and trying to navigate through support, we were losing money on such customers.
What Are Your Options As A Reseller?
If you're a Reseller with us at NameHero you have a couple of options:
- Resell G Suite Through Enom - I have a guide/video tutorial on how you can use the WHMCS module to resell just as we did here at NameHero. I explained the challenges we faced, but you may find it different for your customers.
- Resell G Suite Through ResellerClub - ResellerClub has the ability to Resell G Suite through them for $4.40 per user. While this price is a bit higher than Enom, you may find their integration to WHMCS better, but I personally haven't tried it.
- Join Google's Partner Program - You can resell directly through Google, but they have some pretty tough requirements. For example, they want you to sell at least 100 licenses before they will consider your application. Combine this with a business credit check, an anti-bribery due diligence evaluation, it's a lot for a single Reseller to complete.
- Join ZoHo Mail's Partner Program - Personally, I haven't ventured down this avenue after my experience as a G Suite reseller. You may find it worth while filling out their information form and speaking to one of their team members to see if it makes sense for your business.
Is Reselling Third Party Email Worth It?
Only you can answer this question. For us, it didn't make sense at the time, but I'm not going to say we're never going to do it again.
For now though, we're focused on providing the highest quality, fastest, cloud web hosting at an affordable rate with 10/10 customer service.
I filmed a video tutorial where I talk about this subject and also highlight some of your options as a reseller:
Feel free to let mw know if you have any questions!
