How To Begin Your Own Web Hosting Company

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Starting a web hosting business is actually very expensive and demanding. Just leasing a dedicated server can cost well over $250/month. Added with all the licensing costs for software , maintenance, upgrades, staffing and unforeseeable emergencies, the associated fees can quickly climb well above just the $1000/month mark for the server. Reseller hosting provides a simple option if you don’t wish to incur the monthly cost of the dedicated server nor the headache of managing it when issues arise. This enables you to start smaller and concentrate on gaining new clients as opposed to worrying about issues over the server.

What’s Reseller Hosting?

Reseller hosting is a type of hosting where an existing company sells you a portion of space and an amount of bandwidth on a server in exchange for a monthly fee. Some resellers also include free features with the cost, for instance a billing system, domain reseller account, etc. This monthly fee will likely be greater than that of ordinary web hosting services, but compensates with the increased quantity of space, bandwidth, and the additional software licenses that sometimes have to be purchased for use on the reseller hosting account.

The alloted resources are then there to be distributed to other sites or customers for traditional web hosting. Each individual website hosted off the reseller packaging usually receives their unique control panel such as cPanel or DirectAdmin for their use. Your customers will perceive absolutely no difference between a business having a reseller web hosting account and a host which leases their own servers.

Advantages of Reseller Hosting

The advantages of reseller hosting are numerous. While the bandwidth and space could be more expensive per unit than that purchased with a dedicated server, reseller accounts allow space and bandwidth to get purchased in smaller chunks. This way smaller hosts aren’t wasting resources – and subsequently more money. This allows new hosts to grow into a dedicated server instead of taking the large initial plunge while incurring the much higher monthly fee. A new web host may now yield a small profit instead of a large loss month after month.

Besides this, many know the old sang ‘’stuff happens”. A hard drive might go bad on the server, an operating system might become corrupt, a RAID card might fail.. and the list goes on and on. You will find countless things that could go wrong. With reseller hosting, the majority of the time your reseller company is responsible for the problem. While it may perhaps be a little piece of mind if your customers are experiencing some downtime, it is another person’s server, and it won’t be your responsibility to install security updates to key software or replace hardware that has failed.

The Downside of Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting offers fewer resources than a dedicated server, and thus may exceed resource constraints sooner than somebody with a dedicated server. A reseller hosting account can also only hold so many clients before the space and bandwidth are greater than any reseller package the hosting company can offer, and it becomes more economically feasible to upgrade to a dedicated server. This requires moving clients on the reseller account to your dedicated server, which could lead to downtime. In addition to the moving and expansion issues, most reseller hosting accounts offer little in terms of customization. Reseller accounts are likely to be set in what software is installed within the server itself, and the versions available. An example could be a client requesting PHP 5, when the version that’s installed on the server hosting the reseller account is PHP 4. While some hosts might be happy to upgrade and accommodate, other hosts won’t be able to upgrade as requested.

What to Look for in a Reseller

Reseller accounts should be selected in the same manner as regular hosting accounts. The first reason not to choose a host is if they offer “unlimited” space or bandwidth. There’s no such thing as either of these, and most hosts that offer this are selling beyond the resources they have.

Look carefully at the services and resources the reseller hosting account offers. Some will only allow a particular quantity of SQL databases, email accounts, domains hosted, and perhaps a particular number of clients that are allowed to be hosted. Pay close attention to ensure that you receive the amount of resources you should have for your reseller business. There are many good resources to check when considering potential reseller hosting companies. One good forum is ‘Web Hosting Talk’.

A Successful Reseller Host

Buying a managed reseller hosting account may not make you instantly rich, instantly generate a large income, or become quickly known in the hosting industry. It takes a commitment to customer support, by delivering the very best service possible. Research needs to be conducted on how to setup plans and pricing, how to ensure support requests are handled quickly, and getting your company name out there. While a reseller account will get a business started, it requires at the very least, some business sense to keep it running. Good luck on your new venture.

For a good reseller provider I would recommend on looking at eLief web hosting services – they have been a very reliable company and are becoming quite popular in the industry.

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