Advantages and Disadvantages of Reseller Hosting

If you are a small web host utilizing the services of another web host, or are a website designer who is also hosting their clients websites, then you will most likely have a reseller hosting package to enable you to do this; the basic concept of reseller website hosting is to allow you to setup your own web hosting packages which you can then apply to new domains, allowing you to host multiple websites each with their own client accounts under one, easily manageable website hosting account. Reseller website hosting is a form of shared website hosting, since the server on which you and your client websites are being hosted is most likely shared with other reseller hosting accounts, and in some situations might also be shared with standard shared website hosting accounts; this means that the reliability of standard reseller hosting in some cases is similar or the same to that of standard shared website hosting, meaning that if you are upgrading from shared website hosting to reseller hosting, you might not notice an increase in performance or reliability, especially if you are staying with the same web host.

However, reseller hosting accounts are normally quite feature rich since they are hosted on shared hosting servers, allowing you to provide your hosting clients with choice as to what they want to do with their domain and hosting account, and to also allow them to administrate their website and domain in ways which might not have been possible previously; this means that you can advertise your hosting accounts with more features, making them more attractive to people who are new to the world of website hosting, and are looking for the best value for money package that they can find. Feature rich web hosting packages are what people look for, so by supplying your clients with web hosting packages that have more features than any other web hosts provide, people looking for hosting in general will be more tempted towards your hosting products, since they will be able to see that you are providing more features than other web hosting companies; as mentioned previously, it is value for money at the end of the day which people look for, and you are fulfilling this criteria by providing feature packed website hosting packages.

Reseller hosting is idea for those who want to get started within the web hosting market, since the cost and flexibility of it allows you to seamlessly expand your business without the extra need or cost of VPS or dedicated servers to fulfill the requests of your clients; this is because most reseller hosting accounts are hosted on high specification web hosting servers, meaning that your clients will experience the utmost reliability, and at the same time you can expand your business via the means of upgrading your reseller account to a higher level one - this means that the costs will be far less than if you were to purchase a VPS or dedicated server to help your business expand.

By starting off on a reseller hosting package, you are able to ensure that you are only paying for what you need, since you won’t need anything near the resources provided by VPS and dedicated servers if you are starting out in the web hosting business - this also means that you are able to receive support for your account which might not be possible on higher end accounts, since it might be taken for granted that you have the necessary knowledge; you can also gradually expand your business on standard reseller web hosting by upgrading your package, and when the time comes for it you can easily upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server.

With a reseller package, you have complete control over the packages that you create for your clients including what features are included with each package, you also have the ability to effectively manage all the accounts that you are hosting underneath your reseller account; all these put together means that you can easily manage your reseller hosting account, much in the way that you would be able to with a VPS or dedicated server - albeit at a fraction of the cost of both, meaning that you are getting value for money with your reseller website hosting account.

Advantages of Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting provides both beginners who want to start their own website hosting business as well as professionals who have experience with web hosting many different advantages, meaning that it is a type of web hosting which is made for use by almost anyone. The fact that reseller hosting is cheaper than both VPS and dedicated servers, but provides resellers with the same types of features means that it is a cheaper alternative to those who want to host multiple websites under one website hosting account, so that they can easily manage them.

Cost

As mentioned previously, reseller hosting packages are the perfect solution for those who wish to host multiple websites under one account so that they can be managed easily, since they are cheaper than both VPS and dedicated servers that provides web hosting resellers with more or less the same features, meaning that there isn’t much difference between the two.

Although reseller hosting accounts are normally hosted on shared website hosting servers with shared website hosting accounts as well as other reseller hosting accounts, the servers themselves are normally of high specification meaning that your websites should still be reliable even though they are hosted within a shared website hosting environment; this means that if you are wanting reliability but are unable to afford a VPS or dedicated server which you can mange yourself, you can still take out a standard reseller hosting account since the reliability that you will experience will be similar if not better to that which is provided by VPS and dedicated servers.

If you have a budget that allows you to purchase a small and reasonably specified VPS server, then you will most likely be able to purchase a high specification reseller hosting plan that should allow you to host many if not unlimited websites; although some web hosts may advertise the ability to host an unlimited number of websites, you are still limited by the amount of disk space and bandwidth that you have assigned to your reseller hosting account for you to then assign to your own hosting clients.

The cost of a standard reseller hosting plan also covers support, which means that if you face any type of problem whether it be linked to the server on which you are hosted, or with one of your websites, you should be able to receive support when you need to ensure that your websites are always up and accessible as to ensure that your clients are happy with the service that you are providing them yourself - e.g. if you have a problem with a script on your website, then your web host might be able to help you to sort that problem so that you are able to run the script or web page concerned without any problems.

With the ability to control and create your own web hosting packages, you are able to create your own marketable packages based around the features and specifications that you would like to offer to customers, as well as how many clients that you are able to host under your standard reseller hosting account; the number of clients that you are able to host under your accounts is in relation to your packages since you are limited by the amount of disk space and bandwidth that you have assigned to your reseller hosting account. So, if you have a budget which will allow you to purchase a small VPS then you should also be able to purchase a reasonably specified reseller hosting account which should fulfill your needs both practically and reliability wise for the long term when compared to a small or unreasonably specified VPS or dedicated server.

Support

Support with a standard reseller hosting account is better and much more openly available you might find than with a VPS or dedicated server, meaning that if you are new to the concept of web hosting or reseller hosting then it would be wise to purchase a reseller hosting package before upgrading to something more professional such as a VPS or dedicated server.

With VPS and dedicated servers, hosting companies take it for granted that you have the appropriate knowledge to enable you to effectively manage and administrate a VPS or dedicated server effectively, since you have knowingly taken out a plan which requires you to have a certain amount of knowledge to allow you to manage your server without any help from your web host; in the case of standard reseller hosting, your account is hosted on a shared hosting server with other reseller hosting account and shared hosting accounts alongside yours meaning that the level of support that you receive should be better, since your web host will want to make sure that the server on which you are hosted is running normally and that no accounts are affecting the server’s performance.

Unlike a VPS or dedicated server, the administration of the server on which your reseller account will be hosted should be taken care of by the support team of your web host, meaning that it should be much more secure and up to date in terms of the software being used than a VPS or dedicated server would be; on the other hand, the administration of a VPS or dedicated server is left down to you, since your web host will take it for granted that you have the necessary knowledge needed in order to ensure that your server is up to date and secure that all times from any type of external threat such as a malicious attacker, i.e. a hacker. If you don’t have the necessary knowledge to aid you in the administration of a VPS or dedicated server, you should consider taking out a reseller hosting account since you will then be able to ensure that you have a guaranteed ‘cushion’ of support to aid you in times when you might need some sort of help with your reseller hosting account; with a VPS or dedicated server, you will in some cases have that ‘cushion’ of support that you are able to use in the situation that you need to desperately do something to your server, but might not be able to because you don’t have the necessary knowledge or your server is restricting you from carry out the required actions on your behalf.

In some cases, you might purchase a reseller account with a web host that doesn’t provide resellers with any support beyond the actual server itself, meaning that if you have some sort of problem with your account and not the server you are on, you won’t be able to receive any support from the web host that you have purchased your reseller account from; this also means that if you have any other queries regarding your reseller account, you might not be able to get them answered - this means that this type of reseller account isn’t right for those who don’t have much knowledge about web hosting in general.

Disadvantages of Reseller Hosting

Although reseller website hosting accounts might seem like the perfect website hosting solution for some, for others they might not be and might prove to provide disadvantages for those people who aren’t suited towards a standard reseller website hosting account. For example, those who wish to host many sites that are resource intensive might not find that reseller website hosting is for them, since many web hosts don’t take kindly to users who are hosting resource hogging websites since it slows down the server in general, which can leave other customers unhappy since they aren’t able to load their own websites at a respectable speed - in this case a web host would most likely suspend your reseller hosting account.

Sharing the Server With Others

One of the main disadvantages of reseller website hosting is that you have to share the hosting server with others, including standard shared website hosting accounts and other reseller website hosting accounts; this means that the websites which you host under your standard reseller website hosting account have the ability to be affected by these other websites, which could result in slow loading times and websites not loading at all, meaning that if the websites which you are hosting are commercial ones, they could lose trade if they are not available or accessible.

If resource intensive websites are being hosted on the same server as your reseller hosting account, you might notice that the server itself is being slow which might occur to you as a slow loading website, or you might not be able to carry out certain tasks through the control panel that you have been provided to manage your reseller account, since there just aren’t enough server resources for the requested task to be carried out; in this case you should contact the support team at your web host, so that they are able to suspend the resource intensive accounts and so that the issue can be sorted out quickly and easily, so that you are affected as little as possible.

Shared and reseller website hosting servers are open to abuse, since most hosts setup both types of web hosting account on the same servers, meaning that if a rogue shared website hosting account destined for spamming, the performance of all the websites that are hosted on the server concerned will be compromised, and the spammer will most likely go over his bandwidth limit as well which could have an adverse affect on the server and the websites that it hosts; also, if a hosting account on a server happens to host a compromised server side script, then the security of the entire server and all the websites that it hosts could be compromised - if you are hosting multiple websites, this is not something that you want since your reputation within the hosting business is also something that could be damaged.

In the case that you are affected by other users that are hosted on the same web hosting server as you, you should consider asking your web host to move you to another server which isn’t affected and is still reliable with the service that it provides, since you don’t want your websites to be down for too long since this could also have an adverse affect on you and your business if your clients are unhappy with the service that they are receiving; if this fails then you should consider moving to a VPS or dedicated server, or even another web host just as long as you aren’t being affected by the actions of others, and that your websites are all online and running smoothly. If you want your websites to have the utmost reliability, then you should consider moving to a VPS or dedicated server, since in a dedicated environment it is more or less impossible for your server and websites to be affected by the actions of others, since you aren’t sharing the server with others as you are with standard reseller web hosting.

Server Flexibility

Unlike VPS and dedicated server hosting, you don’t have flexibility with reseller hosting since as mentioned previously, you are sharing the hosting server with others which can in turn affect the performance of your websites overall. With reseller hosting, you don’t have the greatest flexibility since you don’t have access to the main hosting server which means that you aren’t able to customize the server to work in the way that you want it to, it also means that you are unable to install any programs of your choice which might aid any websites which you want to host; for example, a website that you are creating might need the use of a certain server side component, with a standard reseller hosting account you wouldn’t be able to install that component if it isn’t part of the server configuration, meaning that you would have to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server in order to be able to install the component that you need to make the website that you are creating function correctly.

Also, with no access to the main server, if any problems come up with the main server that aren’t fixed then you aren’t able to login to the main server in order to fix them yourself, which in most cases can cause distress to some, especially with those web hosts who take their time to fix things since this can have an adverse business affect for those who are hosted on the server concerned; in this case you should request to be moved to another server so that you aren’t being affected, or upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server that you can manage yourself.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want to host many websites and want reliability then reseller website hosting is the right type of web hosting for you, just as long as you take out a reseller hosting package with a host that had a good reputation for uptime and reliability, amongst other factors that you should always consider when looking for a reseller host; this is because reseller website hosting can be more reliable than higher end solutions such as VPS and dedicated servers, although this is mainly dependent on the specification of the server that your account is hosted on as well as the specification of the VPS or dedicated server to which it is being compared.

If you run your own small web hosting business, then reseller hosting might also be the right type of hosting for you as it might also be for people who do web design but also host their creations for their clients in some situations, since the support provided for standard reseller hosting should be more than suitable for people in these kind of situations; this means that if you experience any kind of problem with your reseller hosting account, you should be able to receive an acceptable level of support and service from your web host to ensure that the problem concerned can be solved quickly and efficiently to ensure that yourself and other people hosted on the same server as you are not directly affect for too long an amount of time. So, if you want to host multiple websites but don’t have the biggest of budgets and also think that a VPS or dedicated server might be a bit too advance for your current needs, then you might find that reseller website hosting is the right type of website hosting for you!