What Is Reseller Hosting? A Beginner’s Guide
With the growing need for companies to establish their presence online, web development and designing services are in high demand. Therefore, the businesses offering these, and other related services, will also be in high demand.
Business owners and entrepreneurs who are already into providing website services (but do not offer hosting services) can leverage this growth opportunity and launch their reseller hosting services to create or supplement an income flow to their brand. Two main reasons for the wide popularity of these business opportunities are overall simplicity and low initial costs of getting started.
Let’s delve deeper into understanding reseller hosting and how it works.
What Is Reseller Hosting?
Reseller web hosting involves a hosting provider renting a server and its resources like hard drive space, RAM, CPU, and bandwidth to other small-size businesses. These small-size businesses who rent parts of that space to third parties are called resellers.
In simple words, you provide web hosting to your clients (out of the larger space that you have bought from a hosting provider) as if you are the web hosting company. This is a great option for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start their own web hosting company or for current web designers and developers who desire to add additional services to their brands.
What Are the Advantages of Reseller Hosting?
There is a wide range of advantages of reseller hosting. A few of them are:
1. Create Customised Hosting Packages
Out of the server space that you have bought, you can set up WordPress Hosting, SSD Hosting, or whatever package type you think would be the best for your client’s specific needs and profile. You can then charge a competitive price (according to the market rate) and pocket the profit (which is the difference between the price at which you bought the hosting and the price at which you are selling the hosting to third parties).
2. Reseller Accounts Are Easily Manageable
When you buy reseller hosting, you gain access to an admin console in the cPanel or other admin packages. Within that is allocated bandwidth and disk space allowance per month. The panel also contains tools that you would require to set up new accounts and assign domains, disk space, and email addresses.
You become capable of creating your customised web hosting plans, managing traffic, providing administrative rights to the users, and managing every aspect of web hosting while using the hardware and software of the provider. Moreover, your customers will have their dashboard or cPanel where they can manage their accounts—therefore, saving you administration costs.
3. Scalability
Usually, most reseller web hosting accounts are scalable, making it easy for you to start small with minimum resources and expand as your clientele expands also. Usually, scaling can be done quickly and without any additional cost.
4. Minimum Complications Involved
You’ll learn a lot while managing reseller hosting, especially if you have not managed web hosting until now. Though the processes involved are easy to follow.
However, if you have been in the hosting business before and have managed shared hosting, it is just a small step up from there and involves a small additional administration cost. Even the process to set up your website using cPanel would be almost the same. It’s just that you’ll be setting up various web hosting accounts from your master account.
5. Convenient Access to Client’s Websites
If you want to offer web services to the clients that host with you, you don’t need to wait for them to share the login credentials to resolve the issue. You have fast access to their accounts, which means that you can quickly attend to issues and provide faster than the usual customer support services. All will be repaid to you perhaps in the form of referrals.
How Do You Make Money as a Reseller?
Reseller hosting is a good source of additional income. As a web designer or an entrepreneur of a business offering website services (exclusive of hosting services), you can attract clients by offering complete packages that include website set-up and hosting and earn an additional amount.
Your income would depend on the wholesale price you’ll pay to the host for buying a large space on the server and the amount you’ll charge from third parties (the maximum that your market can sustain). Some web hosts charge a maintenance fee (mostly monthly) for reseller web hosting accounts, but many do not.
You should spend time researching the market and checking offerings and prices. However, do not compromise on the resources for a lower price, as it might hamper your services and brand name. Always choose a reputable hosting provider with a track record of satisfied clientele.
As we mentioned previously, most reseller accounts are usually scalable so that you can start small and eventually scale up when required. This is a cost-effective way of doing business and keeps your costs as minimum as possible.
What Are the Pre-requisites for Starting a Reseller Web Hosting Business?
Despite web hosting being a competitive market, you can run a profitable hosting company if things are done the right way. So, if you are planning to launch your own business, some important things that you need to consider are your motivation to start the business, your marketing know-how, and technical skills.
It is important to bear in mind that starting a hosting business will take a lot of work as you are running a service-based business. Thus, your motivation to run the business should be clear from the start.
The next thing you need to consider is your current technical skillset. If you are planning to start your reseller hosting business alone and without any help, you will need at least the basic technical skills. You don’t need to be a professional programmer, but you do need to understand how the servers work and have basic web development and web design skills.
The reseller web host you choose may handle things like maintenance, customer support, and more on your behalf. However, you will still need some business and marketing skills for handling things like payment processing and online marketing.
Setting up Your Reseller Hosting Business
You need to follow a simple step-by-step process to set up your reseller hosting business:
1. Identify and Set Your Business Goals
One of the first steps to starting your reseller hosting business is identifying and setting your business goals. Some of the common business goals that you can set are sales targets and how to increase your website traffic and widen your customer base. After figuring out your business goals, narrow down your target audience. For example, developers, designers, or e-commerce businesses.
A well-defined target audience and business plan can help you in building your business better.
2. Select a Web Hosting Company
When starting your reseller hosting business, a lot would depend on the hosting provider you choose. An important thing to consider here is the offers of your hosting provider should align well with what you want to offer to your clients and what you want to achieve for your business.
A few examples of such offers are order management, customer support, scalable plans, the ability to install software applications, and fast website loading speed. Don’t forget to read up the reviews, check their social media accounts, get in touch with their support team, and compare different plans to help you choose better.
3. Make Calculations and Set Your Budget
A well-devised revenue-generating plan can go a long way in ensuring success. Your web hosting plan should suit your budget. Going over your budget can lead to concerns in areas where you may need to spend money.
Once you have decided on your web hosting plan and budget, you can set your selling prices, which are as important as your cost price. Your prices shouldn’t be very high or very low, they should be in between the two extremities and competitively priced.
4. Build a Marketing Plan
Building a good marketing plan is important for promoting your business the right way. Figure out what you want to market about (for example, distinct features or services that you offer) and what will be your marketing channels and platforms (social media marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.)
A good marketing strategy can help you to reach out to your potential customers—thus, helping you grow your business.
Be a Business Owner Today and Become a Hosting Reseller
Whether you want to start afresh or are already into offering web development and design services, reseller hosting can be a great business opportunity for you.
BigRock offers various reseller hosting plans such as Linux Reseller Hosting and Windows Reseller Hosting at various price points. It’s fast and simple, you get instant provisioning, an easy control panel along with other features.
What are you waiting for? Talk with our consultants today to know more about our reseller hosting.
