Reseller program
The reseller program lets you buy capacity at a discount off list, create accounts for your own customers, and put your brand on their console. You'll find it under Account → Reseller.
The mechanic that shapes everything else: one wallet — yours — pays for every server in the fleet, and the fleet limits count every one of those servers together. Read The pool wallet before you plan around anything else on this page.
Applying
Click Apply now on the Reseller page. That files an application and shows you an activation checklist:
Verify your identity
Complete identity verification (KYC) in Settings. The checklist marks this Not required if it isn't being asked for at the moment.
Hold the activation deposit
Your wallet has to be holding at least the activation deposit shown on the checklist. It is not a fee — nothing is taken from you. It stays in your wallet as ordinary credit and pays for your first servers.
Wait for approval
Once both are done, our team activates the account. Until then the status stays pending and none of the reseller features are switched on.
An application can also be rejected, in which case the page shows the reason we gave. If the program is closed to new applicants, applying is refused outright and tells you so.
Wholesale and retail
Once you're active, the page shows your wholesale discount — a percentage off Ekire's list price — and a pricing table: per plan, the list price, your cost (list minus your discount), and you charge (your cost plus a retail margin you set yourself).
Two things to be clear about:
- Only the wholesale column is a real charge. Ekire bills your wallet the list price of whatever your customer deploys, less your discount — a custom-built server included. The table reads the same live price list a deploy is charged from, so its cost column matches what your wallet is debited; your ledger is still the record.
- The retail column is a calculator, nothing more. Ekire does not invoice your customers, does not collect from them, and never shows them your retail price. You bill them and collect from them yourself, outside Ekire. The margin field exists so the table can do the arithmetic for you.
The pricing table covers the standard plans. Custom builds aren't listed in it — they're priced per unit at deploy time and then discounted the same way.
Your own servers are billed at list
The wholesale discount applies to servers your sub-customers deploy. Servers you deploy on your own account are priced at list, exactly as they would be without the program — but they're still paid for by the same wallet and still count against your fleet limits.
Sub-customers
Add customer creates a real Ekire account for an email address you supply, plus an optional label so you can tell them apart in the roster. The roster shows each customer's email, label, and how many servers they have.
A few things worth knowing before you use it:
- The email must be new to Ekire. If that address already has an account, creation is refused — you can't pull an existing customer into your fleet.
- No email is sent. We don't notify the person or send them an invitation. To get them in, have them use Forgot password on that address and set their own password.
- You can run their servers for them. Operate on a customer's row switches your console into their account — see Operating a customer's account.
- Sub-accounts can't be removed from the console. Once created, a sub-customer stays on your roster — open a ticket if you need one taken off.
- They can deploy on their own. A sub-customer signed into their account can launch servers, and those servers come out of your wallet and your fleet limits. The only things bounding that are the limits below. Their deploy page knows your wallet pays: it says the server is billed to their provider instead of showing their own (normally empty) balance, and it never shows them yours. If your wallet can't cover the server, the deploy is refused and they're told to contact you. Their dashboard follows the same rule: it shows Billed to: Your provider in place of their wallet, and drops the runway card, the Top up shortcut and the "Add funds" setup step, none of which mean anything for a wallet your customers' servers never draw on.
Operating a customer's account
Operate on a customer's row switches your console into their account, so you can run their infrastructure without their password. A banner across the top says whose account you're in, and Back to your account returns you to your Reseller page. To move to a different customer, go back first and operate that one.
Operating belongs to your browser session, which every console tab you have open shares — so you work on one customer at a time, not one per tab. If you operate a different customer, go back to your own account, or sign in again in one tab, each of your other open tabs that is showing a different account stops and shows This tab is out of date with a Reload this tab button. A tab already showing the account you moved to carries on as it was. Until you reload, a stopped tab sends nothing, so a deploy, reboot or destroy you start there can never land on a different customer — or on your own account — than the one its banner names.
While you're operating, you can:
- Deploy servers for them. The deploy is billed to your pool at your wholesale price and counts against your fleet limits, exactly as if they had deployed it. The price on the deploy page is list; the rail says so. If your pool can't cover it, the deploy is refused and you're told to add funds to your own wallet. Your customer, deploying the same server on their own, is told to contact you instead.
- Run their servers. Start, stop, reboot, resize, rebuild, rescue mode, destroy, snapshots, backups and the firewall — plus reset the root password and open the browser console.
- Manage their storage, networking and monitoring. Volumes, reserved IPs, VPCs, monitors and alerts.
- Install one-click apps for them — at deploy or on a running server — reveal the app credentials, and switch an app to the customer's own domain. Their saved scripts stay theirs.
Some things stay theirs, and the console hides them while you operate rather than show you an error:
- Their wallet, ledger, invoices, billing profile and payment methods.
- Their saved SSH keys, API keys and webhooks.
- Their team, identity verification, account settings, support tickets, and any affiliate or promo activity.
Servers you deploy for a customer start password-only
A key pasted at deploy would be saved into your customer's own SSH keyring and stay there after your access ends, so the console doesn't offer it — and Email me the password isn't offered either, because it would go to your customer rather than to you. Set or generate a root password and keep it. You can reset it or open the browser console from the server page at any time.
Your access to a customer's account ends the moment your reseller account is suspended or their account is deactivated: the next thing you click is refused — it is not quietly run against your own account instead — and the console asks you to reload, which returns you to your own account. An open browser console closes within about 30 seconds. Every change you make while operating is recorded in Ekire's audit log under your own account, with the customer's account as the target.
The pool wallet
Your wallet is the pool. There's no separate reseller balance, no invoicing between you and your customers, and nothing to reconcile: your customers' servers meter straight against the money you've put in.
- Your wallet pays for every server in the fleet — your sub-customers' servers and your own. Compute and the automated-backup surcharge on those servers are charged to your balance, and so is everything else your sub-customers use: block storage volumes, reserved IPs, paid snapshots and bandwidth overage.
- The fleet limits count all of them together. Your max servers ceiling and any monthly spend ceiling on your account measure your sub-customers' servers and your own as one pool. Filling the ceiling with your own servers leaves your customers nothing.
- A sub-customer's own wallet is not used for their servers. If one of them tops up their own balance, that money does not pay for their servers — it just sits there. Tell your customers to pay you, not Ekire. Their own billing mode doesn't apply either: what they reserve or grow is charged under yours, so a sub-customer's Reserved IPs page and volume resize dialog tell them their provider's account pays, and describe both billing modes instead of quoting the one on their own wallet. A server's Resize tab quotes the server's own figures from the API, which for a sub-customer are what your pool is billed — your wholesale price — not list.
Only servers get your wholesale price
Everything your sub-customers use bills your wallet, but the wholesale discount applies to servers only. Block storage volumes, reserved IPs, paid snapshots and bandwidth overage are charged to your pool at list price — price them into your offer accordingly. Creating a paid snapshot needs an hour of runway in your pool, not in the sub-customer's own wallet.
Limits you'll run into
| Limit | What happens |
|---|---|
| Max sub-accounts | Add customer is refused once you're at the ceiling. Shown on your page. |
| Max servers | A deploy anywhere in the fleet is refused: "Your reseller plan allows N servers across your whole fleet." Shown on your page. |
| Monthly spend cap | Some accounts carry a ceiling on committed monthly spend across the fleet. A deploy that would cross it is refused. It isn't displayed on the page — you'll meet it as a refused deploy. |
Ask support if you need any of them raised.
When the wallet runs out
Everything stops — and if it stays stopped, it's reclaimed.
- Servers are powered off when the pool can't cover their next charge. Depending on how the platform is configured that can be server by server as each reaches an hour it can't pay for, or the whole fleet at once the moment the balance hits zero.
- Your own account is suspended at a zero balance, the same as any other Ekire account, and reactivates as soon as the balance is positive again. You then start the stopped servers yourself.
- Stopping does not stop billing. A powered-off server still holds its disk, memory reservation and IP, so it keeps charging at the same rate. Only destroying a server ends its charges.
The whole fleet is reclaimed after 3 days
The 3-day reclamation that follows a zero-balance suspension applies to the fleet your wallet pays for — your customers' servers as well as your own. They are destroyed and their disks released, permanently, and your customers get no separate warning, because the suspended account is yours.
Set an auto top-up on your wallet. With a fleet on one balance, running dry takes everyone's servers down at once, not just yours — and there is no partial failure mode where your own servers survive and theirs don't.
A suspended reseller account stops your customers deploying
If your reseller account is suspended, your sub-customers can't launch anything — their deploys are refused with "Your reseller account isn't active." You can still deploy on your own account while that lasts, but it falls back to an ordinary personal server limit rather than your fleet ceiling.
Getting it back is a support action, not a new application: an account that was approved once is reactivated, keeping its original approval, discount and limits. You don't redo identity verification and you don't put up the activation deposit a second time.
Your brand
Set a brand name and your sub-customers see it instead of "Ekire" in their console.
That's the extent of it today: it replaces the wordmark in the console. It does not change the address they sign in at, the sender or content of any email we send them, or anything outside the console UI. Leave it empty and they see Ekire.