Customers and hosting packages

A Hosting package is a named set of allowances. Websites, databases, mailboxes, backups and scheduled tasks each get a number, along with the CPU, memory and process limits a website created under it will run with. Most people end up with two or three packages rather than one per customer.

Every allowance takes 0 for unlimited. That is the single most useful thing to know about this form: an empty-feeling plan is not an unset one, and a zero does not mean none.

A worked example, a small shared plan:

Name             Starter
Websites         3
Databases        3
Mailboxes        10
Storage          10 GB
CPU              100      (one core)
Memory           512 MB
Processes        0        (unlimited)

Separately from the numbers, eight parts of the panel can be included in a plan or left out of it. A customer without one does not see a disabled control; the feature is not there.

Under Customers, a customer has a Customer name, an email address and a package. Their websites are created under them, counted against those allowances, and they sign in to a panel that shows only their own. Your allowances is what they see: what their plan includes and what they have used so far.

Users and access is not where this happens. That screen is who runs your server: you, your staff, and anybody you have given access to one website at a time. A customer's own accounts live under that customer, so suspending a customer and suspending the people who sign in for them are not two errands in two places.

There is also a Password box. Fill it in and the person who signs in is created at the same time, using the address above. Leave it empty and you have a customer nobody can sign in as yet, which is fine while you are setting things up: add people later with People on that customer. Contact details are not asked for here, because at the moment you take somebody on you usually do not have them. They are on the customer's edit page when you do.

Changing a package does not reach websites that already exist. That is deliberate: you may have adjusted a website's limits by hand, and a plan change is not a reason to undo that silently.

A Role decides how much of the panel somebody sees. An administrator runs the server. A customer sees their own websites. A developer works on them without the account being theirs, and a read-only account can look without changing anything.

Access can also be narrower than a whole account: Save site grant gives one person one website, which is what you want for the developer working on a single site rather than everything a customer owns.

• Administrator: the server, every customer, every website
• Customer: their own websites, within their package's allowances
• Developer: works on websites they are granted, without owning the account
• Read-only: can see, cannot change

On a customer's page there is a switch, May create customers, and a number beside it. Turn it on and that customer gets a Customers page of their own. The customers they create sit under them: they see those websites, manage them, and see nothing else on the server.

• The number is how many they may hold. Zero is no limit, the same as every other allowance here.
• Your allowances still bound the total. If that customer may have ten websites, ten is the total across their own and everybody they hold. Handing websites out to customers does not create more of them.
• One level. A customer held by somebody else cannot hold customers in turn. The panel refuses it and so does its database, so there is no chain to lose track of.
• Suspending reaches down. Suspend a customer who holds customers and theirs are suspended too, because otherwise the person who could stop those websites is the one you have just locked out. Restoring brings them back.
• Removing does not. A customer who still holds customers cannot be removed until those are, the same way one who still owns websites cannot.

They also get Hosting packages of their own. A plan they make is theirs: you do not see it in your list and they do not see yours, so the terms they offer are theirs to word. Handing one out cannot enlarge anything, because every website is still counted against what that customer holds in total, however generous the plan says they are.

This is not reselling under your own name. There is no second panel, no separate branding and no second price list: the customers they create are customers on your server, and you see all of them.