If you buy a reseller web-hosting plan it is both advantageous and disadvantageous, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed below: -
Advantages
* You can have more flexibility with your web hosting accounts.
* You can save money.
* You can earn more revenue at little cost to yourself.
* You can focus on customer support and leave technical support to your web host.
* Your web host, not you, absorbs server maintenance costs.
Disadvantages
* Your service is only as good as your upstream provider. If the server is frequently down, for example, you may lose clients.
* If you ever have to change web hosts, the move will be an inconvenience for your clients as well as for yourself.
When you purchase a web hosting reseller account you are asked to choose reseller-hosting program. Some provide hosting reseller on Linux and some on windows. Some hosting resellers provide cheap reseller hosting plan. Hosting reseller companies also provides CPanel. Web hosting reseller show out their names to the customers with out letting them know the original name of the company.
There are mainly four categories where reseller web hosting falls, as discussed below.
(a) The reseller acts as an agent for the web hosting company. The service is advertised by the reseller as being with the actual web hosting company. People buy direct from the web hosting company but the reseller gets a cut if customers mention the reseller’s name. They also offer different reseller web hosting packages.
(b) The reseller acts as a marketer for the web hosting company. The service is advertised by the reseller as being with the actual web hosting company. People buy the service from the reseller but all further contact they have is direct with the reseller web hosting company.
(c) The reseller appears to be a web hosting company in his own right, handling sales and support but ‘rebadges’ somebody else’s service. A customer buys web space from the reseller who buys web space (at a lower price) from the actual web hosting company. Customers contact the reseller for support.
(d) The reseller purchases a large chunk of web space and bandwidths from the web hosting company and can then carve that into individual chunks of space/bandwidth for sale to customers. Customers contact the reseller for support.
A reseller hosting account is a web hosting account that lets you host multiple websites within a single web hosting account. Quite a few hosting companies provide reseller options. Some web hosting companies even go so far as to specialize in reseller hosting accounts. Thousands of small companies have made a considerable amount of money during recent years by purchasing reseller hosting accounts and then offering web hosting services through their own brandname. Some of these companies have made millions of dollars doing this. The purpose of this website is to provide webmasters with information about the web reseller industry so they can become successful web hosting companies using reseller hosting accounts.
There is a lot more to the hosting industry than simply serving a web page. Today’s web serving software has grown increasingly complex thanks to dynamic technologies like ASP and PHP. Staying on top of all of the new web hosting technology is basically a full time job. As a result, it is often much easier to utilize a reseller hosting solution instead of trying to set up your own dedicated server.
The amount of support you receive with a reseller hosting account is often directly in line with how much you pay for the reseller web hosting account. For example, there are lots of small hosting companies that offer reseller hosting accounts for as little as $5-10 per month. At that price point, you cannot expect much (if any) support. When a company charges too little for a web hosting reseller account, then they have to overwork the few staff they can afford to hire and then ask volunteers to pick up the rest of the slack. There are quite a few $5-10 per month hosting firms that rely heavily on volunteers to answer questions in their public forums. Sometimes it works, but not very often. Volunteers simply will not invest as much time into the hosting company as salaried staff. Most of the volunteers have their own web hosting reseller accounts, so the volunteers are usually more interested in working on their own business instead of aiding competition in a public forum.
By contrast, there are hosting companies that offer reseller hosting accounts for $50-200 per month and include awesome technical support. For example, check out Shanje ($50 per month) and MaximumASP ($200 per month). By charging more, these web hosting companies can afford to hire competent, educated full time staff to answer your questions in a timely fashion. Also note that both of those companies offer reseller web hosting accounts with a very full feature set including the Microsoft centric technologies such as ASP, ASP.NET, MS Access, and MS SQL Server. Shanje even lets you set the PHP and ASP.NET versions in each website in your web hosting reseller account.
The platform your web hosting company uses to provide reseller hosting accounts will largely determine which features are available to you and to your customers. For example, both Windows and Linux can support Perl, PHP, and MySQL, but only Windows supports ASP, ASP.NET, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL Server. This is extremely important if you are trying to make money by selling web hosting services, because an extremely large number of people are actively searching for hosting companies which offer the Microsoft centric features in addition to the standard open source offerings. If the web hosting company you choose uses Linux instead of the more expensive Windows, then you are effectively turning away a lot of potential customers. When you resell web hosting services, you need to be able to offer all of the features potential customers will want including extremely popular technology like ASP.NET.
So why do some companies offer Linux based solutions instead of Windows when reselling web hosting? The answer is pretty simple: Cost. Linux is free. Windows costs money. For example, Windows 2003 Server Web Edition costs US$400 per server. The good news if you choose to go with a Linux based hosting company is that the accounts will generally cost less. However, you need to seriously weight the cost savings of Linux against the number of people you are going to turn away because Linux cannot support the Microsoft centric features. (ASP, ASP.NET, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL Server)
Some Linux based web hosting companies have argued that they use Linux because it is more stable or more secure. When the comparison was between Windows NT4 and Linux during the mid 1990’s, this argument was relevant. However, Windows 2003 Server has repeatedly proven able to meet and often exceed the stability, security, and performance of Linux in web hosting environments. On identical hosting hardware, Windows 2003 Server running IIS6 will consistently outperform Linux. So the only real issue today is price. Windows 2003 Server has more to offer than Linux, but Windows 2003 Server is more expensive.
Web hosting reseller accounts typically include many of features of dedicated server hosting in an easy to use package at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated server. Most reseller solution offer a web control panel that makes it easy to set up new web sites, databases, and email accounts. In nearly every case, these web control panel interfaces will be easier to use than a dedicated server.
If you are planning to start a web hosting company, you should strongly consider a reseller hosting account. Good web hosting reseller accounts are the least expensive way to start your own web hosting company. You can sign up for one web hosting reseller account and immediately begin offering web hosting services to your own clients. This can provide you with excellent residual income. In addition to being less expensive compared to a dedicated server, reseller web hosting also makes it easier for you to get your web hosting company started. This is because you can focus on getting customer instead of learning to manage the server.
If you already do web design for clients, then a reseller hosting account can provide you with the means to inexpensively host those web sites that you have designed. In addition to receiving a payment for your design services, you will be able to collect residual income from the web hosting services. Somebody is going to need to host the web sites you design, so it may as well be you.
Even if you do not design websites or want to become a web hosting company, you may still need a reseller hosting account. One example is when you have quite a few personal websites that you wish to host. A single reseller hosting account will most likely cost considerably less than a bunch of separate hosting accounts for all of your websites.
In general, reseller web hosting is when a web hosting account that lets you host multiple websites within a single web hosting account. Quite a few hosting companies provide reseller options. In many cases, the reseller options are nothing more than a monetary discount on simple web hosting accounts. In other cases, web hosting companies will specialize in reseller hosting accounts.
