What is Reseller Hosting?
Reseller hosting is when an individual or organization rents or purchases bandwidth and disk space from a web hosting service provider and then sells it to a third party. Depending on the type of reseller plan you choose it’s possible to have between 10 and 250 separate cPanel accounts.
cPanel is a control panel that makes it possible to manage domains, publish websites, organize web files, create email accounts and more. This type of hosting is mostly meant for web developers and designers with a customer base. Reseller hosting allows developers and designers to provide additional web hosting services to their customers. However, it is also used by people who want to start their own web hosting business.
Shared and Reseller Hosting
When looking at shared hosting vs reseller hosting, one can come to the conclusion that they appear similar at first. This is because in both cases you have one server that is being shared by multiple customers. The difference is in the share of computing resources.
Reseller hosting gives you a large piece of the server which allows you to share it with other people. Shared hosting, on the other hand, gives you only a piece large enough for your website. Essentially, with a shared server you share a single server’s resources with other websites — with reseller hosting, you’re hosting other websites.
Advantages of Reseller Hosting
1. Cost
Plans for reseller hosting are fairly cheap. This is why they’re a good option for people looking to get into the web hosting business. Additionally, it simplifies things because you don’t have to purchase the technology, infrastructure, and equipment usually needed to become a web hosting service provider.
2. Focus on the Business
When you choose reseller hosting you can focus on the business aspects rather than the technical aspects of running a web hosting business. This is because all of the tasks related to updates, server maintenance, connectivity, security and so forth, are the responsibility of the web hosting service you’ve rented or purchased from.
3. Room to Expand
If you have a website that gets a lot of traffic, has a lot of pages or your business has several sites, reseller hosting will provide you with a larger number of features and space. For instance, you can run different parts of your sites from different URLs and different servers without having to purchase additional hosting plans.
4. Additional Features
In comparison to basic hosting plans, reseller hosting has a greater number of features. The control panel for the website will also be more powerful, enabling you to manage your site more effectively. Furthermore, a lot of companies will offer unlimited SSL certificates as well as features such as Cpanel.
5. Build Your Brand
Although you’re selling the resources of another web hosting service provider, reseller hosting lets you build your own identity and brand. Essentially, this means that clients won’t know that you’re renting from another web hosting company.
6. Income Opportunities
It’s possible to make additional profit from reseller hosting by selling add-ons such as SSL Certificates, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated IP, domain name registrations, etc.
Disadvantages of Reseller Hosting
7. You’re Dependent on the Original Web Hosting Company
The quality of the original web hosting company will determine the success of your business. This means that if their server regularly goes down or if there are a lot of technical issues, your business will be affected.
8. You’ll Need to Dedicate Time to Customer Service
If you’re providing a web hosting service, even if its reseller hosting, you’re still responsible for answering questions from clients. If you don’t take the time to answer these questions correctly, it could ruin your business.
9. High Level of Difficulty
Unless you’re an expert at running a website you’re going to find the features and control panels of reseller hosting difficult.
10. Changing Providers will Affect Your Clients
If you decided to change your web hosting provider you have to shift all the data from your clients. This can be incredibly difficult so it’s recommended that you have a dedicated server or Virtual Private Server (VPS). Having a dedicated server or VPS will make it easier to change providers but it does make things more expensive.
11. Limited Access to the Server
You are going to have to go through your web hosting service provider for most things because reseller hosting only offers limited access to the server.
To Conclude…
In sum, reseller hosting can be lucrative if you’re looking to get into the web hosting business or if you’re a developer and/or designer. However, it is a lot of work and is certainly not for everyone. Make sure you research web hosting service providers to ensure they can offer your site optimal performance and make sure you’re comfortable with advanced website controls.
