Domain Reseller Recommendation?

[markb1439]

Hi All,

 

I'm trying to decide between eNom, Directi, etc. as the domain provider for my hosting business.

 

One concern I have is that most of these companies provide access to their own websites for people to manage their domains. And these websites also offer hosting and other services that compete with my own services.

 

Is there any way to join a good domain reseller program that integrates with WHMCS and does not attempt to cannibalize my business?

 

Thanks in advance!

[chickendippers]

Both are manageable through WHMCS, your customers will never know.

 

Although if you choose the "ResellerClub" module (it still uses your DirectI account, it just has a different name because it works differently) your customers will be able to login to the DirectI control panel and have access to more functions. The DirectI control panel is brandable.

[netearth]

Hi All,

 

I'm trying to decide between eNom, Directi, etc. as the domain provider for my hosting business.

 

One concern I have is that most of these companies provide access to their own websites for people to manage their domains. And these websites also offer hosting and other services that compete with my own services.

 

Is there any way to join a good domain reseller program that integrates with WHMCS and does not attempt to cannibalize my business?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Hi Mark,

 

Why would a registrar look to "cannibalize" your business.?

 

The whole point of WHMCS and AWBS (billing platforms) is to sell your own services and just use the registrar as a domain outfit, you genereally make your "bread and butter" from hosting or other services..

 

Kind regards,

Chris

[ur]

If Chris' post above did not alleviate your fears, you should also know that Enom and Directi/Resellerclub, or any even a reputable Directi reseller, will never contact your end-users under normal circumstances.

 

Additionally these all offer a certain amount of custom branding so that you can brand your whois output (to a certain extent), for instance.

 

For Directi/Resellerclub resellers, the end user will also never know who the "parent reseller" actually is other than "Public Domain Registry", which is listed in the whois (this must show per ICANN, even if the registrar allows branding). For NetEarth, it's basically the same since they use the LogicBoxes platform too, and for Emon, it will always say Enom somewhere.

 

There are plenty of registrar recommendations here. Read through them, and find what best suits your needs. Good Luck!

[markb1439]

Why would a registrar look to "cannibalize" your business.?

 

Hi Chris, I think I was misunderstood a bit. I wasn't saying that domain registrars would actively try to steal my clients. I was just worried that registrars also offer hosting and other services that compete with my offerings, and I assumed that my clients would be presented with these when they visit the registrar's control panel to manage domains.

 

The whole point of WHMCS and AWBS (billing platforms) is to sell your own services and just use the registrar as a domain outfit, you genereally make your "bread and butter" from hosting or other services..

 

Exactly! Which is why I didn't want my clients being presented with the registrar's hosting and other services when visiting the registrar's portal to manage domains. But these concerns are alleviated by the fact that my clients can manage their domains directly via WHMCS.

 

However, this brings up another concern. I have since read that WHMCS doesn't fully support Directi domain management. I believe that domain forwarding is missing. Can someone confirm this?

 

Chris, does WHMCS directly support managing domains obtained through NetEarthOne?

 

Thanks to all for the responses.

[chickendippers]

See the feature matrices at: http://wiki.whmcs.com/Domain_Registrars

[markb1439]

Thanks, I don't know how I missed that.

 

chickendippers, what domain provider do you use (if you don't mind my asking)?

 

I like your site, BTW.

[chickendippers]

Glad you like it, I put a lot of effort into the WHMCS integration

 

We are gradually transferring our domains to DirectI from Enom, although we still use Enom for SSL certificates at the moment. We signed up with the reseller RoverNIC who quoted us a better price than DirectI.

 

The choice to move was purely economic, we wanted to put our prices down so moved to a cheaper supplier.

[othellotech]

Hi Chris, I think I was misunderstood a bit. I wasn't saying that domain registrars would actively try to steal my clients

Some of them do , but not reputable companies like enom and netearth

[markb1439]

Having reviewed the feature matrix, I'm kind of back to my original question. If I go with Directi, NetEarthOne or a similar service, WHMCS doesn't fully support the domain management. So I guess my clients would need to go to the domain control panel site to do that. I know I can brand that to my company's name, but will it still show off the registrar's hosting services? Or can I delete those references and make it a domain-only control panel? Even so, will it contain reseller links (that my customers can visit and essentially find out how much I pay for domains)?

 

I guess I'll get an account and test it.

[xDable]

Mark, how many of your clients buy domains to use registrars DNS management then? It's certainly not something that's very important to my clients as they are buying hosting from me.

 

My customers can fully manage their domains from WHMCS with DirectI. DNS management is not something that's essential for that - they can still change nameservers, register their own, change their whois info and get the epp code for domains.

[markb1439]

Thanks for the response. Not many of my clients will need these features but I want to make sure I offer them.

 

My customers can fully manage their domains from WHMCS with DirectI. DNS management is not something that's essential for that - they can still change nameservers, register their own, change their whois info and get the epp code for domains.

 

I'm a bit confused. If these things are possible without the registrar's DNS management, what abilities are added by the registrar's DNS management? In other words, why would anyone need it then? Also, do the domain management capabilities of cPanel suffice for many clients? I mean if someone adds a subdomain in cPanel it modifies the zone record that cPanel maintains. That might not be as "authentic" or good as registrar-based management, but it does the trick for what it is.

[Matt]

DNS Record Management is the setting up of A, MX & CNAME records for a domain. They aren't needed all that commonly so in the rare cases that they are, you would just need to handle then manually.

 

It has nothing to do with the ability to change the nameservers a domain points to. They can be viewed and set from the WHMCS client area with any registrar module.

 

Matt

[markb1439]

Thanks Matt.

 

One other question (back to my original one). Let's say I use Resellerclub, and a customer signs up for a domain from them via my WHMCS. Does my customer ever get any notification of the URL for the Resellerclub control panel or supersite, or do they not realize that they can go there and handle some domain functions? Again, I just don't want my clients to see another company's hosting and other offerings, or how easy it is to become a domain reseller. (Well, of course I might want my reseller clients to see this, but not regular shared clients.)

 

If this all stays in WHMCS, that's great.

[Matt]

They don't get the URL from WHMCS at least. Whether or not the logicboxes panel that ResellerClub or NetEarthOne uses sends anything to them or not would be out of our control.

 

Matt

[netearth]

Hi Markb,

 

You can disable client emails in RC and NE, but transfer emails will still go through to the registrant from the RC/NE platform.

 

Regards,

Chris