We at ResellerClub believe in providing the best quality service and excellence to you, our resellers. At ResellerClub, we’ve partnered with over 2,00,000 resellers all around the world to enable them to flourish in their businesses through our products and services. Over the past few years, we’ve published stories of our resellers in their own words to let you, the readers know about them, as well as, help budding businesses gain insights from their experience. Today we want to introduce you to one of our resellers who has been with us for a long time, and who we’re proud to do business with – Ryan Smith of Varial Hosting.
Launched in 2002, Varial Hosting has grown from a simple domain and hosting business catering to local bands, to a full-fledged reselling business.
Here is Ryan Smith’s story about his journey and his business Varial Hosting in his own words!
Company Name: Varial Hosting
We spoke to: Ryan Smith
Website Link: https://varialhosting.com/
Favourite Control Panel Feature: ResellerClub API
I Chose Resellerclub Because of: Approachability and Pricing
Q1. When did you enter the Web Services Industry and where do see your business going?
I launched my very first website in 2002, a discussion forum for local musicians. It became wildly popular, leading me to learn a lot about hosting technologies to keep up with its growth. I began to offer domain and hosting services to local bands and businesses in 2003, which sparked a 16-year career in the web services industry. Recently, Varial Hosting launched our next-generation hosting platform and optimized WordPress Hosting plans, and with it, a new data centre located in our hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. This shift in our business strategy to become a Managed WordPress service provider has been very successful, and we are now focused on expansion and continuing to improve our services.
Q2. What do you think is your secret to success and why do Customers prefer Varial Hosting?
Customers often tell us that the quality of our support is the reason why they host with us. Our support staff is expertly trained, and our business has grown primarily from the word of mouth of our satisfied customers. We have brought high quality Managed WordPress Hosting services to the Canadian market at competitive pricing, which has attracted a lot of new customers since launching this service.
Q3. Tell us a little about doing business in Canada. What are the most unique aspects of the market?
While we do have customers in nearly all parts of the world, most of our business comes from our Canadian client base. In fact, we sell just as many .CA domains as we do .COMs! Having our data centre located in the Canadian prairies is an advantage as it’s a location that is safe from natural disasters, allowing us to maintain great uptime. We also accept payment in both Canadian and US dollars, making it easy for both our local and international customers to purchase our services.
Q4. Is there any advice that you’d like to give others that are still learning the ropes in the Industry?
Try to keep your expenses low when you are first starting your company. Things like an expensive office space are not always needed until you are truly ready to afford them. If you want to avoid working from home or out of coffee shops, consider co-working spaces where you can book meeting rooms and have a mailbox for a fraction of the cost of an office. Hosting is also a very challenging industry and keeping up with security can be stressful and time-demanding. We often see web design agencies trying to do it all, building beautiful websites while also trying to manage their servers. If you do not have the expertise to manage a server, you may want to seek a hosting provider to do this for you, so you can focus on what you do best. We’ve acquired the hosting customers of several web design agencies because managing their servers became too much of a challenge for them.
Q5. You have been with ResellerClub since 2010. What do you think has changed over the years?
Since starting my company 16 years ago, ResellerClub has grown from a simple domain reselling business, to offering many other products like hosting, servers, email solutions, website themes and plugins, etc. They have also been very hands-on in helping me migrate my domain name business from another provider to ResellerClub, not only allowing me to offer better rates to my customers but keeping me informed about promotions and suggesting ways to help me continue to grow my business.
Q6. Could you tell us some interesting stories or anecdotes about your company? How has having ResellerClub as a partner helped your business?
When the domain reselling partner we had previously worked with for several years substantially increased their rates, we approached ResellerClub to see what they could do for us to try to avoid increasing domain rates for our customers. Not only were they able to offer more competitive rates, but they were also able to beat the pricing we originally had on our best selling domains, allowing us to keep pricing the same for our customers while making more profit for ourselves.
Fun fact: Varial Hosting is named after the best trick I could do on a skateboard when I first started the company. Our original data centre was even located across the street from a skate park. Being in a band in my early twenties and building my first music-related website in 2002 led to this unexpected career in web services. Sometimes you never know where life will take you. I’m proud to have followed my passions and built a successful business that keeps me interested every day.
Favourite Control Panel Feature
We have deeply integrated the WHMCS billing software into our website, so we can easily register domains for customers using ResellerClub’s API. As we offer hundreds of top-level domains for sale, we frequently visit the Domains Pricing Overview page of our ResellerClub control panel to view our costs for new domains we wish to sell and to plan promotional offers for our customers.
A big thanks to Ryan for taking the time out to answer these questions, we wish you all the best with your future endeavours!
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