Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his or her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host's services wholesale and then sells them to customers, possibly for a profit. A certain portion of hard drive space and bandwidth is allocated to the reseller account. The reseller may rent a dedicated server from a hosting company, or resell shared hosting services. In the latter case, the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to their own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company they signed for a reseller account with.
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Overview
The typical web hosting reseller might be a web design firm, web developer or systems integrator who offers web hosting as an add-on service. Reseller hosting is also an inexpensive way for web hosting entrepreneurs to start a company. Most reseller hosting plans allow resellers to create their own service plans and choose their own pricing structure. In many cases, resellers are able to establish their own branding via customized control panels and servers.
Reseller Hosting can be thought of as the relationship between a wholesaler and a retailer. The web hosting company (wholesaler) leases space on their servers to resellers (retailers). The reseller can distribute and price the space they've leased for however much bandwidth, disk-space, and price that they want.
How To Start A Web Hosting Company Video
Operation
Reseller hosting does not require extensive knowledge of the technical aspects of web hosting. Usually, the data center operator is responsible for maintaining network infrastructure and hardware, and the dedicated owner configures, secures, and updates the server. A reseller is responsible for interfacing with his or her own customer base, but any hardware, software and connectivity problems are typically forwarded to the server provider from whom the reseller plan was purchased. Being a profitable reseller firm usually involves extensive advertising to get customers. While the fees with major hosts are only a few dollars a month, it is a low-margin business, and resellers must devote large advertising budgets to compete with established competitors. However, web hosting is one of the biggest online businesses, because every website needs hosting.
Resellers can set up and manage customer accounts via a web interface, usually a point-and-click "control panel".
Advantages
There are many advantages of reseller hosting including:
- Earning income - As a reseller you can resell hosting with your development or other IT services and price them as competitively as you wish. Very often the discount or commission a reseller receives from the host provider will increase the more clients they have, so the profit potential can be quite appealing.
- Specify your own hosting plans - Choose how you package your hosting plans and offer flexibility to your clients, tailoring services to the needs of their businesses.
- Invoice your clients under your own company - As a reseller, you can invoice your clients from your own company and the majority, if not all upstream providers will not include their company name anywhere within the documentation online so your clients will be unaware of the fact that you are not the ultimate host.
- Sell as many plans as you wish - As you are the reseller, you can sell as many plans as you are able to with the space and bandwidth you have available. If you can sell more, you can purchase more from your upstream provider and your profits are therefore scalable.
- No large initial costs - As a reseller you are not responsible for the server maintenance costs as this falls to the supplier. Also, there are no huge outlays for space and bandwidth because you already have the customers paying you for their service.
- Only focus on customer service - As a reseller, you only need to focus on your customer service and the technical support will be handled by your upstream provider.
Commonly sold with:
- Free-end-user-support
- WHMCS (an all-in-one client management, billing and support solution for online businesses)
- SSL for hosting domain (add SSL to a domain to secure the billing form of the website)
- SSL reseller account (resell SSL to clients at discounted prices and keep any profits)
- Domain reseller account (resell domains as well as hosting from a hosting company)
List of control panels
Well-known control panels list:
- WHM/cPanel (Unix)
- Enkompass (Windows; equivalent to cPanel/WHM but has ceased development)
- Plesk (Windows/Unix)
- DirectAdmin
- Webmin (Unix)
- H-sphere (H-sphere)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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