When my websites went down last week, I decided that it was a bad thing to put all of my eggs in one basket. I searched around and settled on a web hosting company – HostMerit.com. They had a rich feature set and had a nice “reseller” package for $12.50 per month. This allows me to place a large number of domains on their server, but I can also create “customers” who have their own web space. Carlos, Sonny Jr, Skip, Chris and others can now have the whole 9 yards of web hosting including total control of email, site designers and installed packages. I act as though I am selling web space, but I can charge whatever I want or give it away for free.

The trouble is, that HostMerit is a little slow on customer responsiveness. Their help desk appears to be in India. Getting them to fix the simple issues associated with getting the account set up, is like pulling teeth. First, the unlimited domain feature did not work. Next, I could not give a customer multiple domains. (I still don’t have that working right.)

The servers are snappy and the connection is fast. I notice that their disks are over 90% full, and I wonder that I might blow their limits when I start uploading all of the data that I expect to transfer (about a gig).

If it all works out, I will have all of the small websites on this server, including a few of the better paying ones. I will spread the load over the two servers. If I sell or give away web hosting, it will have to be with the understanding that certain aspects are out of my control. Some of my free website users seemed quite upset that they got the account suspension notice. None, were as upset as I was. I lost a couple of hundred bucks.