November 13, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – The Planet bills itself as “the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company” and its reselling activity has certainly played a significant part in getting it where it is today. A few choice rumors HostSearch.com has picked up on suggest that the company will be announcing updates to its reseller program reasonably soon. We caught up with Todd Mitchell, General Manager of The Planet’s Hosting Division, to find out what is going on!
Mr. Mitchell – good to catch up with you. How are things at The Planet these days? Is business good?
Thanks for your time, John. We’ve been busy at The Planet, especially in light of our imminent reseller program launch. The Planet has experienced tremendous growth following the merger, and the reseller program launch reflects our continued commitment to delivering an array of new products and solutions that meet the fluid needs of our broad customer base.
The Planet has always been recognized as having a robust reseller program. How big a component of your activity is reselling?
Resellers are a huge portion of our customer base. In fact, more than half of our business comes from our reseller community. While we’ve had a reseller program in place at both companies, this new program is the first under the new corporate moniker. In meetings with a group of our resellers, they outlined a number of specific program requirements that were important to them, and we’ve taken their recommendations.
And we have heard that you are planning an upgrade to your program. If your reselling activity is going so well, why do you need this upgrade?
As the Web hosting market matures, our resellers requirements do as well. More companies are choosing to host their IT infrastructure, and our resellers enterprise-class products and services to meet the demands of their customers. The comprehensive new reseller program has been designed to fulfill their requirements with specialized pricing, programs and tools that provide a solid foundation for their growth.
So, what exactly will the upgrade entail and how will it change the program?
We’ve taken several steps to upgrade the program. First of all, we’ve created a three-tier program. Resellers enter the first tier with monthly recurring revenues (MRR) of just $500, and the second tier requires MRR to be $2500. There’s a third tier for companies with MRR above $5000. In each, there is defined, graduated pricing that’s predictable, which is one of the things our resellers wanted first and foremost.
We also want to drive new business, so we’ve taken a giant leap and are going after new resellers with an industry-first approach. We will offer qualified charter members a free month of service for each new server purchased during the three-month introductory launch. This is a limited-time offer that provides resellers who are migrating to our data centers some extra cushion time to make the change financially viable for them.
On another front, until now resellers were required to work with a sales executive, but they were available only during regular business hours. Since more than 40% of our business is international, that wasn’t a customer-friendly approach. So now they can still work with a sales exec who has extended hours, but they also can place electronic orders from our new reseller portal at any hour of the day. We also have a pre-determined set of servers that are ready-to-go in just one hour, so that’s a great resource for them too.
We have a new reseller portal that provides resellers with access to white papers, photography and brochures they can brand for their use. We want to take every opportunity to ensure our resellers are fully equipped with the resources they require to manage their businesses.
When will all this come online?
The reseller program launches on Wednesday, Nov. 14. New customers interested in joining The Planet’s reseller community can sign-up at http://www.theplanet.com/partners/hosting_reseller.asp
Well, good luck with the upgrade and don’t forget to fill us in on how things are going further down the line.
Thank you again for your time, John. We’ll absolutely keep HostSearch apprised of any additional developments with our reseller program.
The Planet bills itself as “the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company” and its reselling activity has certainly played a significant part in getting it where it is today. A few choice rumors HostSearch.com has picked up on suggest that the company will be announcing updates to its reseller program reasonably soon. We caught up with Todd Mitchell, General Manager of The Planet’s Hosting Division, to find out what is going on!
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