A reseller account is a standard business account that has been marked as a reseller, and is then able to create sub-businesses.
So the first step to being a reseller is that you create a business account for yourself, and then we mark your account as a reseller account, and you can create sub-businesses and manage those sub-businesses from the one screen.
So this is designed for businesses that manage the IT infrastructure of a number of other businesses and want to keep each business logically separated but be able to manage them all from one place.
The advantages of this over putting all accounts into one business are:
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Each business gets a separate billing cycle, so when a new business comes along, you don't have to worry about being half way through a billing cycle
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Each business has a separate name, user list, domains list, aliases list, distribution lists, global address book, etc. This allows you to keep each business nicely separated from each other
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Because each business has a separate name, you can direct each business to their customised "Business login" screen
There's no extra cost in being a reseller, it's just the cost of the businesses + accounts you create. It just makes managing multiple businesses easier.
However, this does raise one potential issue about how customers are billed.
We did do a survey of customers when we were developing features, and we found that in the majority of cases, the resellers were actually paying for the accounts themselves, and then invoicing their sub-business customers separately. Basically, they would bill for the email accounts (plus a margin) and extra time and work they did (e.g., network setup, webpage design, etc.) and create one final invoice for the customer.
Of course, not everyone does it that way, but we had to decide on some billing system design limits, and so went with what the majority in our survey said they did and didn't add the ability to set separate prices and margins for sub-businesses.
Instead, we just made it so, when you create a sub-business, you can decide if the sub-business should have its own billing details, or if the parent business should be billed so CC details only need to be in one place.
For a feature overview, see the main business & family page. To learn how to setup a business or family, see the setting up a business & family screen.