Cloud storage reseller: how to sell it under your own brand
A checklist to decide whether to resell branded file sharing, and which Tarkle plan fits your customers.
To work as a cloud storage reseller, you offer file storage and sharing under your own brand, on a platform built on Tarkle's software and infrastructure. You keep the customer relationship, the brand and the support conversation.
This guide is for agency owners, IT and managed service providers, web hosts and small business owners who are deciding whether to do it. It promises no income. What you earn depends on your market, your price and how many customers you win.
Two ways to use Tarkle under your name
Tarkle has two routes for this, and the difference is who buys from you.
Agency is for serving your own clients. Each client gets a branded workspace on your platform. Read about white label for agencies and a workspace for every client.
Reseller and Reseller Pro are for distributing Tarkle under your own name to the customers you sell to. You set your own plans and prices with Stripe. Read about the reseller platform.
The reseller pricing page puts it in one sentence: "Run Tarkle for your own clients with Agency, or distribute it under your own name with Reseller or Reseller Pro." For the plan details, use the reseller plans page and the pricing page.
Cloud storage reseller checklist: should you resell?
Go through these seven points in order. If you cannot answer one, stop there and find out before you buy.
The customer. Write one sentence: "I sell file storage and sharing to ___ so they can ___." Then ask three existing clients how they send and store files today, and what annoys them.
The business model. Decide whether file sharing is part of a service you already sell, or a separate subscription with its own price. Part of your service points to Agency. A separate subscription with your own prices points to Reseller or Reseller Pro.
The margin. Add the plan cost, your support time and your payment fees, then compare the total with the price you would charge each customer. If the margin is thin at ten customers, more customers rarely fix it.
The storage. Reseller includes 50 customer workspaces and 6 TB of pooled storage. Reseller Pro includes 100 customer workspaces and 15 TB of pooled storage. Work out how much each customer needs before you count how many fit, and check the numbers on the reseller plans page.
The brand. Decide what customers see: your logo and colours on every transfer page, request page and portal. Read the custom branding and custom domain pages for each setting.
The support. Decide who answers what. You answer your customers' commercial questions and pass technical issues to Tarkle.
The terms. Read the reseller terms before you sell.
Before you sell to anyone, create a test customer with a second email address and walk through the whole path yourself: sign-up, the first upload and the first download. Fix what looks wrong while nobody is paying for it.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
What you run and what Tarkle runs
Tarkle runs the platform, using its software and infrastructure. You run the business: the customer, the price and the first line of support. Under the reseller terms, Tarkle takes no revenue share, transaction fee or commission on payments between you and your customers.
Plan for one boundary. You can sell only in your approved sales territories, and not through sub-resellers. Reseller includes one sales territory, and Reseller Pro includes up to three.
Who this is not for
A reseller plan is a poor fit if you do not want to answer your customers' commercial questions, or if you need more sales territories than your plan includes. If your only customers are your own clients, Agency is the route to compare first.
What to remember about Tarkle
Tarkle has two routes: Agency serves your own clients under your brand, and Reseller or Reseller Pro lets you sell Tarkle under your own name with your own plans and prices. Check your margin and storage first, then open the reseller plans page. When you are ready to see the product your customers will use, create your account.