Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host's services wholesale and then sell them to customers, possibly for a profit. A certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to the reseller account. The reseller may rent a dedicated server from a hosting company or resell shared hosting services. In the latter case, the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to his own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company he signed for a reseller account with.
Reseller hosting does not require extensive knowledge of the technical aspects of web hosting. Usually, the data center operator is responsible for maintaining network infrastructure and hardware, and the dedicated server owner configures, secures, and updates the server. A reseller is responsible for interfacing with his/her own customer base, but any hardware, software, and connectivity problems are typically forwarded to the server provider from whom the reseller plan was purchased. Being a profitable reseller firm usually involves extensive advertising to get customers. While the monthly fees with major hosts are only a few dollars a month, it's a low margin business, and resellers must devote large advertising budgets to compete with established competitors. However, web hosting is one of the biggest online businesses, because every website needs hosting.
Resellers can set up and manage customer accounts via a web interface, usually point and click “Control Panels. Well-known Control Panels List:
- WHM/cPanel (UNIX) (Windows version coming soon)
- Plesk (Windows/Unix)
- DirectAdmin etc.
The various hosting companies will provide you with facilities like to set up new accounts, suspend accounts, upgrade them & set the DNS for your end clients. All the other server administration tasks would be taken care of by hosting companies. Server updates, security configurations, network configurations, OS patches installation & other administrative tasks would be taken care of by our technical support staff. The add on services are free control panels for users, Anonymous Servers, Unlimited Domain Pointers, Unlimited POP3 Email accounts, Unlimited Mailing Lists, C & Python, Access to webmail, Password protected directories, Download daily backups, etc.
Other features includes Free web based admin panel, Manage FTP accounts, Unlimited Sub domains, Unlimited MySQL Databases, Web Based File Manager, Ability to use dedicated IPs on accounts XML Support.
Server Side Includes: Free ENOM Domain Reseller Account, Site statistics Choice of shopping carts, Spam Filtering.
Reseller hosting is also an inexpensive way for web hosting entrepreneurs to start a company. Most reseller hosting plans allow resellers to create their own service plans and choose their own pricing structure. In many cases, resellers are able to establish their own branding via customized control panels and name servers.