Use of the Service Account

[DrDan]

Hi there,

I have a service account set up with my own domain (e.g. mydomain.com).

I have a handful of clients whose websites I look after and they don't need/want access to a control panel - I control everything for them personally (website updates, adding new mailboxes etc). They each have their own domain (e.g. clientdomain.com).

So my questions are:

1) Should I just add their domains to my service account? Is this dangerous? Would I be better of setting up individual accounts under a separate plan?

2) If just add them to the service account:
2a) Is there a limit on how many domains I can add to this account?
2b) Does the 33% resource rule apply to the service account?
2c) Would their mailserver be mail.mydomain.com or mail.clientdomain.com?
2d) Could I move their domain to its own account at a later date if I wanted to?

3) If create a seperate account for each client domain then:
3a) Will their mailserver address be mail.clientdomain.com?
3b) Can it be set up as mail.mydomain.com?


Many thanks,

Dan.

 

[Atul]

1. When customer do not need CP access, certainly you can out them in service account.

2. 2a/2b There is no specific limits for service account. 33% limit applies to all accounts including service account.

2c. Yes

2d. No, domain need to be deleted and then added to new CP.

 

[DrDan]

Thanks for the reply.

2c. Yes

Do you mean mail.mydomain.com or mail.clientdomain.com?

2d. No, domain need to be deleted and then added to new CP.

Does this present a problem in terms of downtime, lost mail etc. Is this incentive not to do it this way?

Dan.

 

[Stephen]

Thanks for the reply.



Do you mean mail.mydomain.com or mail.clientdomain.com?



Does this present a problem in terms of downtime, lost mail etc. Is this incentive not to do it this way?

Dan.

Every domain gets a new mail.domain.com so it will be their domain

Yes if you had to move it later it would mean downtime as you would HAVE to recreate all the mail accounts, addresses etc

 

[DrDan]

Thanks!

 

[nzkiwi]

From personal experience I would recommend creating separate accounts for each client.

Like you I have a number of small users who didn't want or need their own control panel as I managed everything for them. I used a single account for them. However circumstances change and some of those clients decided they did want to manage their own account for various reasons. They couldn't understand why their domain would be unavailable for a while.

A few clients discovered that by setting up an account with another hosting provider, their website and email would remain functional at all times. Once they had set up everything on their new host, they just needed to change DNS pointers. Consequently I lost them for good.

The cost of additional Control Panels is insignificant when compared to to the loss of a client.

 

[Stephen]

From personal experience I would recommend creating separate accounts for each client.

Like you I have a number of small users who didn't want or need their own control panel as I managed everything for them. I used a single account for them. However circumstances change and some of those clients decided they did want to manage their own account for various reasons. They couldn't understand why their domain would be unavailable for a while.

A few clients discovered that by setting up an account with another hosting provider, their website and email would remain functional at all times. Once they had set up everything on their new host, they just needed to change DNS pointers. Consequently I lost them for good.

The cost of additional Control Panels is insignificant when compared to to the loss of a client.

This can be true indeed, sadly.

 

[DrDan]

From personal experience I would recommend creating separate accounts for each client.

Thank you for sharing the benefit of your experience.

How long is the downtime when moving a domain from one account to the other? Is it just the time it take to physically set the domain up, publish the site and create mailboxes?

Dan.

 

[Stephen]

Thank you for sharing the benefit of your experience.

How long is the downtime when moving a domain from one account to the other? Is it just the time it take to physically set the domain up, publish the site and create mailboxes?

Dan.

It mostly depends upon DNS, as 99% of the time when you change it will change servers(and hence IPs) while MOST ISPs are not doing insane 24+ hour cache these days some still do, in most cases you'd be looking at a couple hours.