Reseller Webhosting Guide

Reseller web hosting is a particular type of web hosting which gives its owner enough power to buy the server space, market it according to his needs and then sell it on to his own customers. This web hosting facility is mostly adapted by web designers, consultants or marketers, who always want to offer their customers a complete package including hosting. With this web hosting, the account owner will always divide up his selected hard drive space, bandwidth and resell web hosting as well. Basically resellers are those web consultants, who are web developers as well as designers and at the same time the web or a system-integration company owner. For them, web hosting is an extra service along with the other bunch of services.

The web hosting providers generally offer a discount of 50 percent or more to the resellers on the price of a reseller hosting account. Web hosting resellers are not at all behind the maintenance of the web server services or other maintenance related services; rather they are just the web hosting provider. So in case of any issues like server down and access problem, web hosting resellers have least responsibility while the entire responsibility falls upon the on the owner of the server in which the reseller host is hosted.

Generally it has been seen that the web hosting resellers can actually set up their web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its own brand name. Now web host reselling has been turned out to be very easy through ‘GUI Control Panels’ or Graphical User Interface. While few of the reseller programs offer customs Control Panel for their resellers’ customers, a major portion of the reseller programs offer the popular and well-known Control Panels.

Some popular control panels are:

DirectAdmin (Linux / Unix)

Ensim Pro (Windows and Linux / Unix)

Helm (Windows)

Webmin (Linux / Unix)

Hosting Controller (Windows)

WHM/cPanel (Windows (beta) and Linux / Unix)

Plesk (Windows and Linux / Unix)

A reseller is known as a seller of web host accounts. Being a reseller one is able to establish his own brand name as well as he can control all the features, pricing and content of the packages that he is to offer for sale. It means he should also have the full control of the marketing and sales strategy.

Basically web developers, web designers, VARs, developers, and system integrators, who provide Internet business solutions to their customers cab resell the web hosting to their customers. But in reality, everyone, who has a general understanding of web hosting and has the ability to interact with customers in a positive matter, can be a reseller. The reseller web hosting’ job is essentially that of Customer Services.

The first thing you should do to become a reseller is to find a web host provider. But make sure you are satisfied with the services of the company and can trust it to provide a respectable level of support. This is the most important thing in web hosting because you are dependent on the web host provider to create a reputation of customer satisfaction. After that, you just need to follow the registration procedures of the web host provider to set up your account, where you will be asked to fill in their application. When the account is set up, you can create your own website to sell your services to your customers.

Bow the question arises what is the point of purchasing reseller web hosting? Reseller web hosting will help you to start your own web hosting company. You can have the opportunity to use your reseller web hosting to sell hosting to your customers. If you are a web developer, then you can use it to provide web hosting to your web design customers as well. But the best thing with reseller web hosting is that your customers are never going to know that they are hosting their site with the company as everything will remain branded under your name.

There are a number of web hosting programs, then why a reseller program is considered to be the most feasible and profitable of all web hosting options available in the market? Unlike other programs, a reseller program offers you the opportunity to start and maintain a business with a minimum startup expense. Apart from that, being a reseller, you can generate additional income from your own web site.

Here are some benefits of reseller web hosting:

It involves minimal initial investment to start a profitable business.

With a reselling program, you can carry on with your own business, as well as can sell a portion of your bandwidth to your customers to fetch some extra income.

This program does not need to maintain equipment.

This can set your own prices.

It can provide other services in addition with reselling.

This reselling program has the access to hosting small, medium and large sites.

It does not need to update or upgrade at will.

This program does not need a sound technical knowledge. Most web host companies provide technical support for your clients. But basic knowledge like the use of HTML and scripting languages, familiarization with FTP/publishing utilities, knowledge of sending and receiving email and administration of POP accounts, ability to register new domain names and edit existing domain records for your customers, are necessary.

It offers flexibility to a great extent.

It helps to save on overall hosting costs.

It will help you to develop a premiere reputation for you and your company if your customers are satisfied with your services.

Moreover, you are from any responsibilities to look after the problems like server down or access issues, as the entire responsibility falls upon the shoulders of the owner of the server.

Web server administration is the responsibility of the first and original Web Host Provider.

If you want to resell web hosting, here are some basic steps you need to know to become a successful web businessman.

Get a different domain name: An exceptional domain name is essential for the success for your reselling your web hosting, because of branding and search engine optimization. To research online, there are two search engines, Google and Yahoo. Then you have to go to a domain search site for example www.whois.sc to check whether there is already a name that has not been registered yet. As web hosting is getting popular day by day, it is very difficult to find a great name for your domain at the first few chances. In this case, you can buy a domain name from the current owner from the sites like www.sedo.com.

Setting up a great web hosting reseller account: If you want to set up your own domain registration process, get connectivity from major bandwidth providers, and possess a host of high end computers, you have to get a reseller account from an established supplier. A good reseller account will offer tools like control panel to manage multiple domains and accounts from one location. In this way, you can log in once and check the billing and provisioning status of your customer accounts. You also can view and compare web hosting reseller providers at www.hostsearch.com/reseller_web_hosting.asp.

Website and order form: You have to hire web designing professional to convince customers to sign up with you as a web host. It may cost you a bit, higher, but it will look professional and help you save some money during your startup process.

Traffic to your website: There are complete guide on how to market and gain website traffic like Google`s AdWords advertising.

Unique offering: Make sure that you are different in some significant way from other web hosting offerings in the market. You can be unique by creating a unique special offer or by having an exceptional promotion or giveaway or by bundling services that other companies don’t generally offer.

As a web hosting reseller, apart from having servers that are connected to the Internet, which let new customers know about your services via a webpage, the most critical part of your company is the set of hosting automation tools you use generally to manage your customers as well as your servers and with these tools your customers too can manage their websites.

Control Panels: control panels allow a hosting reseller company to get off the ground so easily. The three most popular control panels are SWsoft`s Plesk, cPanel, and H-Sphere.

Account management: From the client-end perspective, your customers should have the power to manage their accounts in terms of how they relate to your sales and IT and tech support areas of your company. By automating tasks in these areas you actually reduce the amount of man hours needed to run your company.

Site statistics: This is important to know how they are doing, without knowing how many hits they are getting on each page.

Email and Spam: Emails are one of the most important tools a web hosts. The customers should be able to add or manage or delete email addresses and delimit their access rights according to the kind of email you are providing them.

File management: Your customers need a way to get their files to your servers, whether you go with tried and true FTP or a web based solution.

HTML editor: There is a variety of feature sets and prices of HTML editor. The lowest form of editor is Notepad while some advanced editors are WYSIWYG, source editing, scripting, hotkeys, integration with FLASH etc.

Site and Directory Security: you will have to plan in terms of how much control you want to give your customers to ensure Site and directory security.

Database and ODBC management: This should be given to your customers to manage their connectivity to a database and to manage the objects in the database itself.

Other reseller web hosting customer tools include:

Site Builder Wizard & Web Templates

Web site management (IIS/Apache)

Domain name

eCommerce

Tech support