Reseller hosting refers to hosting service in which the service provider is actually an account holder in a shared hosting plan, whereby he splits up his allotted disk-space and bandwidth to resell web hosting. It implies therefore that in reseller hosting, one does not own a grassroots web-hosting set-up.
Reseller hosts do not generally hold responsibility for maintaining and running host server. That job is catered to by actual owner of host server who sells hosting space for reseller hosting. It is indeed possible that in a single host server, several reseller hosting plans are running concurrently, each of which catering further to any number of websites down the line.
Depending on requirement, reseller hosting can be of 2 types - multi-domain account and branded hosting business.
Reseller Hosting - Multi-Domain Account
Here, a reseller hosting account caters to in-house needs. To illustrate, let us consider the following examples:
1. A webmaster may require a network of websites under different domain names to serve different business plans, but all are hosted under a common reseller hosting account. It is not uncommon to find a web business running more than one website for different purposes.
2. A company owns different domain names for assorted departments, all linked to a single reseller hosting account. For example, a travel company requires different websites for different travel destinations.
3. A large company allots different websites for different brands it owns, like a car company that has several branded cars under its fold. Reseller hosting is a good choice for it.
Branded Reseller Hosting
If you have decided to start reseller hosting as a business, you may want to become an unnamed franchisee of a parent hosting company. All you need is to buy a suitable reseller hosting plan and thereafter float your own website that will cater to end-customers. Though a reseller hosting account cuts down your overhead expenses, you may still need to advertise heavily to sell your hosting plans. For a start, you need to focus on getting customers in the city you live or from your immediate locality.
Advantages of Reseller Hosting
A reseller hosting account accrues significant benefits over both short and long term. Here is a look at some of them.
1. Other than hiring charge, there are no additional expense on account of hosting. Since fixed costs by very nature is predictable, reseller hosting is a help for long-term cost layout, specially for small hosting companies.
2. Create your branded hosting company. While your hosting provider remains content allotting you space in their server, you are free to build up branded reseller hosting business. In many cases of reseller hosting, the server owner may agree to naming nameserver after your company name and even allot separate IP address for your nameservers.
3. In reseller hosting, you will have no responsibility to manage and maintain the servers or any component of data center where the servers are located. No technical pullback means more time to devote to business.
4. You can host as many websites as you want with reseller hosting, limited only by disk-space and bandwidth. In a similar vein, your reseller hosting offers may vary from being simple no-frill hosting to one with all paraphernalia, thus allowing you to play with margins.
5. Start small, grow big. Reseller hosting accounts are mostly scalable, so you enlarge your hosting account in tandem with your requirement. This is a perfect recipe to grow your business. If you chalk it out fine, who knows you may as well have your own servers one day.
6. In most cases, reseller hosting is made simple through GUI Control Panels. Some examples are Plesk (Windows / Unix), WHM cPanel (Unix), Hosting Controller (Windows), DirectAdmin (Unix) and so on. A reseller hosting provider can easily monitor all websites located under him, such as increasing or decreasing disk-space and bandwidth, allotting or withdrawing software applications, and even permitting or denying respective control panels.
In a nutshell therefore, to debut with a web hosting business, nothing is better than starting with reseller hosting.
Article by Josh -
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