How to resell cloud storage under your own brand
Eight steps to resell cloud storage under your own brand: decide what you sell, check the margin, package plans, pick Agency, Reseller or Reseller Pro, brand it and give a first customer a branded login.
To resell cloud storage you buy a hosted platform, put your own brand and domain on it, set your own plans and prices, and sell accounts to your own customers. The platform runs the storage and file sharing; you run the business. This guide walks from the decision to resell to the moment your first customer signs in on your branded login, and it shows which Tarkle plan fits which kind of buyer.
It is written for agency owners, IT and managed service providers, and hosting firms. Nothing here promises income: whether reselling pays depends on your market, your price and how many customers you win.
Step 1: Decide what you sell and what you keep
Reselling splits the work in two. You keep the customer relationship, the price, the billing and first-line support. The platform provider keeps the servers, storage, updates and the product itself. Tarkle is a hosted service only, so there is no install to run yourself. If a customer must have an on-premise server, a hosted reseller platform is the wrong tool.
Write one sentence before you compare anything: "I sell file storage and sharing to ___ so they can ___." A web host's customers who need to send large files, an MSP's small-business clients who need a safe place for documents, or a design niche that needs delivery links are all workable answers.
Ask three existing clients what they use today to send and store files, and what annoys them. Their words become your plan descriptions.
Step 2: Check the margin before you resell cloud storage
Work out the numbers on paper first. Take the platform fee, divide it by the number of customers you expect in the first year, add your own time for support and your payment fees, and compare the total with the price you plan to charge per customer. If the gap is thin at ten customers, it will not improve by hoping for fifty.
Storage is the other side of the sum. On a reseller plan all customer workspaces draw from one pooled allowance, so the question is how much each customer needs and how many you can fit before you need more. Reseller includes 50 customer workspaces and 6 TB of pooled storage. Reseller Pro includes 100 customer workspaces and 15 TB. Read the live prices and extra-usage rules on the reseller plans and pricing page before you finish the sum.
Step 3: Pick a niche and package your plans
A short price list is easier to sell and to support. Two plans sized by storage, for example a small one for a single user and a larger one for a team, cover most niches. For each plan decide the storage, the number of team seats, the trial length and whether it is billed monthly, yearly or not at all (for customers you invoice by hand).
Do not sell every terabyte you own. Keep a share of the pool unsold, so one big upload from a customer never blocks a new sign-up.
Step 4: Choose Agency, Reseller or Reseller Pro
The choice depends on who is buying from you.
Agency is for serving your own clients. You include file sharing in your service, clients get a workspace under your name, and you do not set customer prices. Read about white label for agencies and a workspace for every client.
Reseller is for selling file sharing as your own product, to your own customers, under your own name. It includes your own plans and prices set with Stripe, customer workspaces, pooled storage, one authorized sales territory, a built-in referral program, self-registration and manual provisioning, and live chat and email support.
Reseller Pro adds more customer workspaces and storage, up to three sales territories, a built-in affiliate program and priority support via Slack.
An organization holds either Agency or a reseller plan, not both. Reseller plans are bought monthly or yearly, and the yearly rate is the lower monthly price billed once. Agency can also be paid once as a lifetime plan, which is described on the lifetime plans page. Compare Agency prices on the pricing page.
Step 5: Put your brand and domain on it
After you pay, you open the partner settings and fill in the business profile: business name, legal name, tax ID, address, logo, favicon, accent color, links to your terms and privacy pages, and a business email. Legal name and tax ID lock once set, so check them before you save.
Next you add your domain. You enter DNS records at your DNS host, then press refresh to check them. Your sign-in address, for example app.yourbrand.com, becomes active when the check passes. The same screen sets the domain your notification emails are sent from, so customers see your name in their inbox as well. The feature pages for custom branding and custom domain show what each setting changes.
Use a subdomain you do not use for anything else, such as files.yourbrand.com. Keep the DNS records somewhere you can find them in a year.
Step 6: Set your plans, prices and billing
This is where you stop being a user and start being a seller. On Reseller and Reseller Pro you create your own customer plans and prices with Stripe, using your own account. Tarkle's reseller terms say Tarkle takes no revenue share, transaction fee or commission on payments between you and your customers. Those payments run through the payment processor you connect, under your own agreement with that processor, and Tarkle does not process them. Tarkle bills you for your plan; you bill your customers.
You also choose how new customers start. The default plan for self-registration is one you pick, so make it the small plan with a trial, not the large one.
The reseller platform page explains what you control as a reseller, and the plans page has the live numbers.
Step 7: Give your first customer a branded login
You have two routes, and both are included on Reseller and Reseller Pro.
Manual provisioning. You enter a workspace name and the customer's email. Tarkle creates the account and the customer workspace, then sends an invitation under your name, logo and sender domain. The subject reads "[your name] set up [workspace name] for you."
Self-registration. The customer signs up on your branded sign-up page and starts on the default plan you chose.
Either way the customer signs in with a code sent by email, with no password to remember, and becomes Admin of their own workspace. They see only that workspace, with your branding.
My advice is to start by hand. Manual provisioning lets you talk to each of your first customers, choose the plan and spot problems before they repeat. Open self-registration once you have sent one invitation, watched it arrive and signed in as a customer would.
Create a test customer with a second email address and walk through the invitation, sign-in and first upload yourself. Fix what looks wrong before a real customer sees it.
Step 8: Know the rules before you sell
Tarkle's reseller terms are the contract, so read them in full. These points matter most when you plan the business:
Sell only in your approved sales territories, and not through sub-resellers. Selling elsewhere needs Tarkle's written approval.
Turn on two-factor authentication for every admin account.
Give customers accurate information about how files are kept and deleted, and tell them that access may end if your Tarkle subscription ends.
Keep your claims about security, uptime, certifications and features within what Tarkle documents in writing.
Do not describe the platform as technology built entirely by you. The legal pages that every reseller platform shows name Cloudbrand Technologies, Inc. once as your Technology Partner, and you cannot remove that line.
You answer customers' questions about prices, plans and invoices, and pass technical issues to Tarkle.
Cancelling takes effect at the end of the paid period. If your reseller account is suspended, your customers' workspaces may be suspended too, so keep your payment details up to date.
Who this is not for
A reseller plan is not a fit if you do not want to answer customer questions about prices and invoices, if you need the platform to run on your own servers, or if your customers expect consumer backup, desktop sync or a mobile app, which Tarkle does not offer.
Your next step
Write your one-sentence customer, do the margin sum, and open the reseller plans next to the Agency pricing. For the background on the program, read the reseller program article, and you can start for free to see the product your customers will use.