Start your own hosting brand
Create an organization, give it your brand, put a first product on sale at your price, and check your catalogue, from start to finish.
In the dashboard
This tutorial sets up a hosting brand of your own: an organization that sells Coritan products under your name and at your prices, to customers who sign in on your storefront instead of coritan.com. You create the organization, give it your name, logo and legal details, put a first product on sale, and read your catalogue the way your storefront will. Each section ends with something you can check before you go on.
Your customers pay your prices. Coritan keeps a platform fee from what its payment gateways collect for you, and each resource behind a product you resell runs on your Coritan account at Coritan's price (How money moves). You build the storefront, the site your customers use, on the Organization API: this tutorial gets everything ready for it. How organizations work explains the parts first.
Before you begin
Section titled Before you begin- The Coritan account that should own the organization, signed in. The resources behind the products you resell run on this account, and only this account can delete the organization.
- A slug for the organization, such as
acme. It appears in every Organization API path, and you cannot change it later. - A terminal with
curl, for section 4.
1. Create the organization
Section titled 1. Create the organization- In the dashboard, go to Organizations and select New organization.
- Enter a Name, such as
Acme Hosting. Customers see it on your storefront. - Check the Slug. The dashboard fills it in from the name until you edit it.
- Under Billing mode, choose Platform merchant of record. Coritan then takes your customers' payments and pays you each month. You can change the mode later (Organization billing).
- Select Create organization.
The organization's Overview tab opens, and you are its owner. The organization is active, and its header shows the tier, platform fee and limits that Coritan set (Create an organization).
2. Give it your brand
Section titled 2. Give it your brand- Select the organization's Settings tab.
- On the Storefront & branding card, fill in the Logo URL, the Primary colour and Secondary colour as hex codes such as
#0F2A57, and the Support email. Add the Terms of service URL and Privacy policy URL when you have them. Select Save changes on the card. - On the Legal entity card, fill in the Legal name, the Registered address and, if you have one, the Tax / VAT ID. Invoice PDFs print them. Select Save changes on the card.
Each card saves on its own, and the footer counts the changes you have not saved yet. Your storefront reads the saved details through the Storefront API (Change organization settings).
Note
The Custom domain on the same card is where emails to your customers link, such as invoices and password resets. Saving it does not point it at your storefront, and the card shows Domain unverified until Coritan verifies it. Contact support after you save one.
3. Put a first product on sale
Section titled 3. Put a first product on saleA linked product is backed by a Coritan product: when a customer orders it, Coritan creates the real resource, such as a Container Apps server.
- Select the organization's Products tab, then New product.
- Enter a Name, such as
Minecraft 4 GB, and check the Slug, which your storefront uses in the product's address. You cannot change it later. - Under Kind, choose Linked to a platform product, and pick the Coritan plan to resell under Platform product.
- Select Create product.
- Open the product and, under Plans, select Add plan.
- Enter a Plan name, such as
Monthly, and choose the Billing cycle. - Enter the Currency as a three-letter code, such as
USD, and the Price. Set it above Coritan's price for the same billing cycle, because your Coritan account pays that price for each resource. - Select Add plan.
The plan appears under Plans, and the product list no longer shows None under Active plans. You cannot edit a plan once you add it, so add a new plan to change a price (Set up products and pricing).
4. Check your catalogue
Section titled 4. Check your catalogueYour storefront reads your brand and your products through the Storefront API, which needs no credential. Read them the same way, with your own slug in place of acme:
curl https://api.coritan.com/api/v1/orgs/acme/storefront/branding
curl https://api.coritan.com/api/v1/orgs/acme/storefront/products
The first answer holds your org_name, logo_url and colours, and the second lists your product in products. A change can take up to a minute to show there, because the answers may be cached (Show your catalogue with the Storefront API).
Troubleshooting
Section titled TroubleshootingSlug already taken- Another organization uses that slug. Choose a different one.
- Product limit reached
- Your organization holds as many products as its tier allows, so New product is turned off. Reuse a product you no longer sell, or ask support to raise the limit.
404 Organization not foundfrom the Storefront API- The slug in the address is wrong, or the organization is not
active. The Storefront API answers only for an active organization.
Next steps
Section titled Next steps- Build a storefront on the Organization API, the site where your customers order and pay
- Manage members and roles, to bring your team in
- The staff console, where your team looks after customers and their servers