What is Reseller Hosting? A Complete Guide

In a few words – Reseller hosting is a is just that, a hosting plan enabling the resale of sub accounts under your own brand without needing to worry about high upfront cost, technical expertise and infrastructure management.

Understanding the Basics

As a business model lets you purchase hosting services from a provider and then resell them to your own clients. You become a quasi middleman allowing for extensive customisation but without the usual headaches associated with starting out in a highly competitive; technical business area.

To simplify it further, you subscribe to a package which allocates block of server space, bandwidth, and other hosting resources to you which you can then resell. It’s down to you how you carve up your resource allocation, you could create a number of tiered packages and sell those on to other businesses or individuals looking for web hosting.

Overselling is enabled meaning that you can allocate more resources to your customers than you actually have, if they reach those limits just scale your account to match. As a reseller you can offer so much customisation as a total beginner. You don’t need expertise in server management or maintaining physical infrastructure your provider handles that.

How Does Reselling Work?

It’s as straightforward as you may think. Start by purchasing a reseller hosting plan, which gives you access to a substantial amount of server space and resources. Using control panels like WHM (Web Host Manager), you can create individual hosting accounts for your clients, each with their own allocated resources.

It’s the job of your hosting provider to handle the truly technical bits – physical maintenance, updates and security for the server are all handled. With that out of the way you can focus on what actually matters: building you business and getting clients through the door.

Why Consider a Reseller Plan?

Low Barrier to Entry

Unlike starting out with physical hardware, or even a VPS. A reseller plan requires a much smaller upfront investment. There’s not need to worry about purchasing expensive servers, renting rack space or paying for expensive licenses. This is the primary reason that entrepreneurs look to reselling packages as a way to enter the web hosting industry.

Scalability

As your business grows, your package grows with it. Easily upgrade your reseller plan to allow for additional accounts or increased disc space. Again, this lets you start off small and expand as demand for your services increase keeping your costs and risk low.

Additional Income Stream

For many entrepreneurs already active in the website space, reselling provides a great opportunity to add a stable influx of recurring revenue to your existing services. This is especially true for digital agencies who usually design and build a clients site, by offering hosting and domain registration services you can increase your income with minimal effort.

Customisation Opportunities

Our fully white-label package enables you to fully customise your hosting plans so that they fit your niche and use your branding. Whether that’s creating custom packages in WHM or adding your logo it’s all down to you.

Key Success Factors

1. Choose a Reliable Provider

Starting out you need to be sure that your hosting provider offers top reliability and performance. Start out by looking for providers that offer:

• Bulletproof infrastructure supporting an excellent uptime. Look for 99% or higher.
• High resources. Look for per account limits on CPU, RAM and EP (Entry Processes).
• Features. What panel is it using? You might prefer WHM over DirectAdmin also look for features that would normally cost extra (WordPress, Malware Scanning, Backups and One-click installs).
• How many accounts do you get and how much storage? This is very important when starting out as it helps you keep costs low without impacting your service.
• Migration support. Many providers will help you migrate in existing accounts.
• Money-back guarantees. Don’t like the service? Cancel within the guarantee period and get your money back.

These are critical as they will impact your service, the last thing you need starting out is a provider that is slow or has lots of downtime.

2. Exceptional Customer Support

You’ll be the primary contact for your clients so providing outstanding customer support is key. This could mean:

• Responding promptly to all queries, pre-sales or technical. Engaging with your customers is key to retaining them no matter how trivial the query is.
• Maintaining expertise in your area. This could be learning more about your panel or how to resolve common issues in WordPress.
• Most providers will offer backups but it’s important to have your own backups ready as another level of redundancy.
• Follow up with clients to ensure they’re satisfied with the service and how you could improve it further.

Many of our packages include support, which can be a real lifesaver when you’re not available but most of the time it’s your responsibility to help your clients.

3. Competitive Pricing Strategy

Setting the right prices requires careful consideration of several factors:

• Your costs for the hosting space
• Operational overheads
• Desired profit margins
• Market competition
• Value proposition to clients

Research your competitors to better understand the market but don’t make a carbon-copy of their model. You should differentiate yourself as a different brand creating plans that offer value whilst keeping your margins healthy. And remember racing to the bottom is unlikely to be a winning strategy.

4. Effective Marketing Strategy

Success in the industry requires getting the word out about your services. Consider:

• Promoting through your existing website and customer base.
• Utilising social media marketing. Creating graphics that capture attention.
• Updating blog posts and content with calls-to-action to ensure you capture conversions.
• Implementing referral programmes to incentivise existing clients to grow your business for you.

Don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Happy clients are a resource in their own right.

5. Referral Programmes

Encourage existing customers to recommend your services by offering incentives such as:

• Discounts on future services
• Increased storage space
• Extended service periods

The more referrals they provide, the better the incentives. This approach reduces the time and money you spend on marketing, expanding your business with minimal input.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need technical knowledge?

One of the most appealing aspects for a hosting reseller is that extensive technical knowledge isn’t required. Your provider will handle both physical and virtual aspects of server maintenance of the, ensuring everything runs smoothly. That being said, a basic understanding of how it works “under the hood” will help you manage your business more effectively and provide better support to your clients. This could be learning more about your control panel software (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin) and the different features available in each. Or about how to support well known apps including: WordPress, Magento, Laravel and many more.

What’s the time commitment like?

Compared to other businesses selling hosting can be hands-off. Ultimately this comes down to the services you offer but at a minimum you’ll need to invest your time in:

• Marketing your services.
• Supporting your clients.
• Building new client relationships and maintaining existing ones (equally as important).
• Managing the billing and admin side as without profit what’s the point!

How scalable is a hosting business?

As a product reseller web hosting is very scalable and this is one of its biggest selling points. As you acquire more clients, you can easily purchase additional storage and more sub-accounts. This flexibility allows you to grow as required without major upfront investment and clear pricing.

What level of support can I expect?

Our team are ready to assist you. Whether that’s migrating in existing accounts or helping resolve complex technical issues we always aim to resolve your requests as quickly and smoothly as possible. Often going above and beyond the support provided elsewhere. Leverage this to help provide expert support for your clients and ultimately a better service.

Making it work for you

Whether you’re a web developer looking to expand into hosting or an entrepreneur seeking a new challenge, reselling websites, emails and domains offers a clear path to success with a low start-up cost. The key to success in this space is first ensuring you find the right hosting partner, putting customer relationship management at the forefront, finding your niche and putting strategies in place to market it to your audience.

Starting out from scratch is never easy. With the majority of technical aspects handled for you, your success depends solely on your perseverance and ability to attract and retain clients. Focus on your niche and how you can provide the best possible service – creating real value for your clients.

Summary

As the web hosting industry continues to grow, it’s never a bad time to get into reselling hosting products and starting your own web hosting company. With passion, patience and perseverance you can easily build and scale a company alongside existing services or as a standalone business.

Our reseller service provides a platform to enter the web hosting marketing without the financial and technical barriers associated with traditional methods. With the right plan and a proven provider you can create a profitable venture with minimal technical knowledge at an excellent price.