Most of the time, you are choosing from three main types of web hosting services: shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server. These three main categories represent what hosting companies offer in their service lineups.
There are other hosting services you can look into as well depending on your specific needs and requirements. Reseller hosting is one of them.
What is reseller hosting?
Reseller hosting is a type of web hosting service designed for resellers. If you want to offer web hosting services to your own clients, then this type of hosting is perfect for you. Aside from hosting your own websites, you can also create user accounts and separate each user’s hosting space from the other.
Reseller hosting is somewhat unique. It sits between shared hosting and VPS hosting nicely. You get the same affordability and ease of use as you get from shared hosting.
Most reseller hosting nowadays offer free WHMCS or similar reseller control panel, so creating hosting packages and managing your clients will also be very easy to do. It would be like using cPanel. However, reseller hosting also offers a nice performance boost, similar to what VPS hosting is offering.
This type of hosting service is designed to be resold, so hosting companies tend to share a single physical server with fewer resellers to maintain a high level of performance. The higher monthly service charge you pay when you use reseller hosting translates into faster site, more server resources and more features.
Do I need to be a reseller to use reseller hosting?
Not at all! I know a lot of personal site owners who switched to reseller hosting to be able to handle more traffic. When your site grows faster than you expected and you can’t afford to switch to a VPS hosting just yet, reseller hosting might be the sweet spot you are looking for. It is often just slightly more expensive than shared hosting, but you get more for you money.
Reseller hosting is also perfect for those of you who run multiple websites. Instead of hosting them using shared hosting and running them together, you can now separate them into individual accounts.
This is a good practice to get into for two reasons. First of all, you don’t have to worry about one site ruining the other. When a site gets hacked, only websites on the same account will be affected.
The second reason is better management. Since each site is separated individually, you can have multiple server administrators running different sites. One admin can have access to only one site and not the entire server. It would be much easier to keep track of changes and other things happening on your server.
Lastly, web designers and developers can also use reseller hosting to offer hosting services as an added value to their clients. This is something I do personally. Whenever I’m negotiating a new project with a client, I can always throw in free hosting (for the first year) as a bonus.
Believe me when I say that a bonus like this is something that clients really like. You can also offer the free hosting service with a premium support and maintenance package if you like.
Bonuses and other benefits
Since reseller hosting is designed for resellers, you do get a lot of interesting features and bonuses. For starters, you can actually gain access to a domain reseller service for free when you sign up for select reseller hosting plans.
A domain reseller service allows you to purchase – and resell – domain names at a lower price, which means you can save a lot on your domain names in the long run.
Advertising credits are also among the bonuses offered by reseller hosting plans. Hosting companies selling reseller hosting want you to have more clients; more clients for you means more clients for them too.
To jumpstart your hosting business, you are given up to $500 in free advertising credits. These credits can be used to place ads on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and various other advertising networks. How you use the free advertising credits is entirely up to you.
You also get more features for your money. Bigger hosting space and more monthly bandwidth are usually part of the best reseller hosting plans. You can also set up unlimited email addresses or databases too.
My favorite, however, is white-labeling. You can set up your own private nameservers, which means no one will know where you are hosting your websites.
Advanced features such as SSL security, brandable cPanel, better server monitoring and premium support are also part of the things you will find as you search deeper for the right reseller hosting plan to use.
Whether you are starting your own hosting company, offering hosting services to web design clients or you simply want to host a lot of your own sites efficiently, reseller hosting is a solution for you.
1 comment
nice article. i have signed up for reseller hosting program. now,how to sell it?
Comments are closed.