Want to generate a steady stream of passive income by adding a complimentary hosting service to your portfolio?
Reseller hosting allows you to sell white labeled hosting services to your clients under your brand name. It’s the best option for those who want to get into the hosting business without investing in expensive resources to manage servers and hosting infrastructures.
Choosing the right reseller hosting is the most critical part of your hosting business. In fact, it’s hard to back out from your original decision if it turns out to be the wrong choice. In our hosting reseller reviews, we’ll compare some of the best reseller hosting services available and also show you how to evaluate your needs to find the best host reseller provider to meet your budget and business goals.
How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Reseller
Before you choose a reseller hosting plan, it’s vital to understand what factors you need to consider beforehand.
Let’s start by explaining what reseller hosting actually is:
What’s Reseller Hosting?
Reseller hosting allows you to sublease your hosting space to your clients. Resellers buy a hosting service, typically a VPS (Virtual Private Server), from a hosting provider for a wholesale rate and sublease to others by configuring and dividing the hosting space per individual client needs.
As a host reseller, you can set the retail price for different customer segments based on the hosting performance levels. That way, your customers get a highly customized service for their individual needs.
Web hosting providers often offer white labeled reseller accounts that allow you to sell hosting services under your brand name. That means your hosting company manages the servers and hosting infrastructure, but you run the business. This also means you’ll have to handle customer support and invoicing your customers.
Reseller hosting is best suited for you if you want to…
- Create your own web hosting company without the complexities of building and maintaining the hosting infrastructure.
- Offer a complementary service to your web design and development clients.
- Generate a steady stream of passive income.
- Retain your clients by building a long-lasting relationship with them and ultimately increase your profits.
Now you might be wondering, why should I sell reseller hosting rather than referring my clients to a hosting provider as an affiliate?
Running a web hosting reseller business has many advantages over affiliate hosting referrals, like:
- Easy setup for your clients: Web hosting can be a complex concept for novice site owners who’ve never had a website before. Rather than sending them to a shared hosting provider, it’s easier to have you set up a reseller hosting account.
- More profit: With the right strategies, you can make more money in the long run than you’d earn as an affiliate.
- Retain and get more referrals: Providing reseller hosting also helps you build better business relationships with your clients. You can retain your clients longer and possibly get more referrals to your design and development services.
How We Ranked Reseller Hosting Services
To give you the best recommendations, we put these hosting reseller providers through a three-step evaluation:
- Feature Deep Dive: We analyzed features like resource control, branding options, security, and server performance to ensure your clients have a smooth experience.
- Hands-on Testing: We signed up for accounts and tested account setup, client management tools, and support responsiveness.
- Industry Insights: We researched provider reputations and pricing to give you the full picture.
This process helps us identify the top host resellers so that you can make the best pick for your business.
To add to that, here is a table of our picks in case you want to go through them quickly.
| Reseller Hosting | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Accounts | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HostGator | Up to 240 GB | Unmetered | Unlimited | $34.99/mo. |
| 2. SiteGround | Up to 40+ GB | - | Unlimited | $6.69 per mo. |
| 3. GreenGeeks | Up to 160 GB | Upto 1600 GB | Up to 80 | $19.95/mo. |
| 4. A2 Hosting | Up to 300 GB | Unlimited | 25-100 | $13.99/mo. |
| 5. InMotion Hosting | Up to 200 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | $16.99/mo. |
| 6. Liquid Web | 64 GB | 8 TB | - | Custom |
1. HostGator Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: Up to 240 GB
- Bandwidth: Unmetered
- Accounts: Unlimited
- Pricing: $34.99 per month
- Website: HostGator.com
HostGator provides one of the best reseller hosting services on the market. With HostGator hosting reselling, you can control the resource allocation based on your clients’ needs.
Their reseller plans include everything you need to resell web hosting services to your clients, including WHM and billing software.
Best of all, HostGator even offers brandable video tutorials for your clients, so you can white label every aspect of your web hosting company.
You should also check out these comparisons:
- HostGator vs DreamHost
- HostGator vs. GreenGeeks
- HostGator vs InMotion Hosting
- HostGator vs WP Engine
- HostGator vs iPage
- HostGator vs Liquid Web
- HostGator vs A2 Hosting
2. SiteGround Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: 40+ GB
- Bandwidth: –
- Accounts: Unlimited
- Pricing: Starts at $6.69 per month
- Website: SiteGround.com
Unlike HostGator, SiteGround charges you based on the number of hosting credits you want to purchase rather than hosting resources allocated to your account. The more bulk orders you make, the cheaper the reseller hosting plan becomes. As a result, SiteGround is a cheap reseller hosting provider that can allow you to quickly scale your business.
You can start as low as $6.69 per month. You can host unlimited websites but you’ll be limited to 20 GB web space.
Since reseller credits never expire, you can use them anytime to launch or renew the account.
You should also check out these hosting comparisons between,
- SiteGround vs HostGator
- SiteGround vs WPEngine
- SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting
- SiteGround vs GreenGeeks
- SiteGround vs A2 Hosting
- SiteGround vs DreamHost
- SiteGround vs Liquid Web
- SiteGround vs iPage
3. GreenGeeks Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: Up to 160 GB
- Bandwidth: Up to 1600 GB
- Accounts: Up to 80
- Pricing: $2.95 per month
- Website: GreenGeeks.com
GreenGeeks reseller hosting plans come with a WHMCS license and SSD storage.
The starter plan gives you 25 cPanel accounts for $19.95 per month. The benefit is that you can easily add computing resources as you grow, such as more memory or RAM to your account when you need it.
They even allow you to register or transfer domain names at wholesale prices directly from your account manager.
4. A2 Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: Up to 300 GB
- Bandwidth: 1000 GB – Unlimited
- Accounts: 25-100
- Pricing: $15.95 per month
- Website: A2hosting.com
A2 Hosting is one of the most affordable and cheap reseller hosting providers on the market. You get cPanel/WHM with white label options. A2 Hosting also offers turbo reseller hosting for 20x faster speed and 2x memory.
A2 Hosting offers an anytime money-back guarantee, so you can try their service risk-free.
5. InMotion Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: Up to 200 GB
- Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Accounts: Unlimited
- Pricing: $13.99 per month
- Website: InMotionHosting.com
Get started with InMotion Hosting »
If you’re looking for a reseller hosting service that lets you set up unlimited cPanels, then InMotion Hosting could be your best choice.
Unlike providers that we’ve reviewed here, InMotion hosting reseller plans are classified based on the disk space and bandwidth.
All reseller plans include free WHMCS billing software, backups, and security.
Read our InMotion Host review »
6. LiquidWeb Reseller Hosting
- Disk space: 64 GB
- Bandwidth: 8 TB
- Accounts: –
- Pricing: Custom
- Website: LiquidWeb.com
If you’re looking to resell managed hosting products to your clients, then you might want to consider Liquid Web’s reseller hosting. Liquid Web is a renowned managed web hosting provider that also offers reseller hosting services.
With Liquid Web, you can sell VPN reseller hosting and dedicated and cloud hosting services to your clients. Since they offer only managed hosting products, you don’t have to hire a system admin to manage your hosting services.
Reseller Web Hosting as a Business
Before we start drilling into the details of choosing a reseller hosting service, it’s worth taking a moment to examine whether starting a reseller web hosting business is worth the investment.
Estimate the Number of Customers
Estimate how many customers you think you’d be able to attract to your hosting business. This will help you identify whether investing in a hosting plan will be profitable in the long run.
After estimating the number of customers you could attract, the next step is to browse through reseller hosting reviews and determine which company meets your needs and budget.
Create Your Own Hosting Packages
You don’t necessarily have to copy your hosting provider’s cheap hosting packages to profitably sell your reselling packages. Understand your customers’ preferences and create unique packages that you think will win their business.
Set Up the Pricing
Setting up the pricing for your reselling packages can be tricky. Ideally, you’ll need to charge less than the typical hosting packages offered by most popular hosting providers. This price difference will help entice potential clients to subscribe to one of your reseller hosting plans.
Build a Custom Reseller Hosting Landing Page
When choosing a reseller hosting company, reviewing the tools they provide to promote and sell your reseller packages is essential.
For instance, good hosting providers offer various built-in landing page templates to sell your hosting packages. To create a landing page, all you have to do is install the template on your site and edit the content and pricing so you can start selling reseller packages in no time flat.
Start Selling Your Hosting Services
If you’re selling hosting services as a complementary business, keep in mind that not all your clients will be interested in subscribing to a reseller hosting plan offered by you. Generally speaking, novice website owners are more likely to purchase a hosting account from you. Understanding your customer segments is the key to the growth of your business so you can build offerings that are custom-tailored to those levels of customers.
Provide Technical Support
One of the key things to keep in mind when selling a reseller hosting package is that you’ll have to shoulder the responsibility of providing timely support to your customers. While this can be fun at first, as your business grows, providing timely support may feel like an extra burden you need to take care of.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Reseller Hosting Plan
Just like any web hosting package, reseller hosting plans can also vary on the basis of features, performance, and support. Choosing the right reseller hosting plan that fits your entrepreneurial ambitions makes it tricky.
Let’s take a look at what factors you should consider when choosing a reseller hosting plan:
Uptime Guarantee
The uptime guarantee is one of the most important factors to look at before you dive into choosing a reseller hosting plan. So what does uptime actually mean, and why is it important when choosing a reseller provider?
Uptime is a term used to describe the period a website, hosted on a specific server, is available online. Usually, uptime is expressed as a percentage of the total available time, 365 days per year.
Many factors can affect your server’s uptime, including security threats, hardware glitches, human error, natural calamities, power outages, disk corruption, and a lot more.
For example, a site that’s up all year long around the clock is said to have 100% uptime. If uptime is 90%, that means the website is down for 36.5 days.
It’s a no-brainer that you need to choose a hosting company that offers maximum uptime. Even though some hosts promise it, it’s practically impossible to offer a 100% uptime guarantee. Generally speaking, anything below 99.9% is unreliable.
Support
As a reseller, you’re obliged to offer support whenever your clients have any questions about any aspect of their web hosting account and usage. But, when you have a hosting-related question, you’ll need to contact your hosting provider.
It’s vital to choose reseller hosting with a good reputation for resolving customer issues promptly.
24/7 support is a standard feature offered by almost all popular web hosting providers. However, be sure to check whether your hosting service of choice offers email support for technical assistance because not everyone offers it. Email or ticket-based support is essential if you want to resolve complex issues that may take a bit longer to resolve. That way, you don’t have to waste your time on Live Chat when seeking assistance.
Having extensive documentation is also a must. With a great knowledge base, you don’t have to waste your time with live chats because, in most cases, you can get issues sorted out on your own.
A good hosting company also lets you publish brandable support content like tutorial videos to help your clients solve their needs.
Speed
Speed, without a doubt, is a critical element when choosing a reseller hosting package.
A hosting provider that compromises on speed can sabotage your business’ reputation. You can’t afford to choose a slow web hosting service.
In fact, website visitors expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less. Studies show that they’ll abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
The first step towards building a blazing-fast website is to choose a web hosting account that doesn’t slow down your clients’ sites. And the later steps include performance and speed optimization through caching, Javascript and CSS minification, and more.
Control Panel
Reseller plans should include everything you need to succeed with your own hosting company, such as WHM and billing software.
Recap: Best Reseller Hosting Companies
After our reseller hosting review, we’ve found that HostGator offers the best reseller web hosting on the market. They offer different pricing plans that perfectly fit your needs regardless of the size of your business. The best thing is that you get WHMCS client management/billing software and over 400 brandable video tutorials for your customers.
HostGator makes it super easy to launch your web hosting business and start converting your existing clients into web hosting customers. You’ll also get access to their reseller club, where you can resell 70+ gTLDs & ccTLDs.
If you’re looking for a reseller hosting provider that offers robust performance, uptime, and a complete set of features at a fair price, then HostGator is for you!
FAQs: Choosing a Reseller Hosting Company
Having helped thousands of users choose the right web hosting account for their needs, we’ve found that people ask the same sort of questions again and again. This is why we’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions, so you can find the best reseller hosting service for your site.
How does reseller hosting work?
Reseller hosting lets you sublease your hosting space to your clients per their needs. As a reseller, you buy a hosting service, typically a VPS (Virtual Private Server), from a hosting provider for a wholesale rate and sublease it to your customers to make a huge profit.
You get full control over how you sell your hosting service to your clients. You can set the retail prices how you want and offer a highly customized service to fit your customers’ specific needs.
How can I promote my reseller hosting service on my site?
Reputed hosting providers often offer you everything you need to promote and sell your hosting services. For example, you can choose from their wide variety of landing page templates that you can install on your website. Using these templates, you can create a custom landing page on your site, explaining and promoting your hosting business.
If your hosting company doesn’t offer landing page templates for building your web hosting pages, you might want to create it by yourself or get a template from a third-party vendor. Once you have the page set up, you can direct your potential customers to that page and sell them your services.
How does reseller hosting differ from affiliate marketing?
Reseller hosting is focused on earning a steady stream of passive income by selling hosting services to your customers and retaining them. Conversely, with affiliate marketing, you earn a one-time referral fee by recommending people choose a third-party hosting service.
Choosing a shared hosting service from a hosting provider can be a daunting task for newbie customers. With reseller hosting, you don’t tell your customers figure out their own hosting setup. Instead, you can set up a hosting account for your customers on your reseller hosting account.
What’s included in a reseller package?
A reputed hosting provider will give you everything you need to promote your reseller hosting services on your site, including but not limited to…
- Custom landing page templates that you can easily install on your site. With these templates, you can build custom pages for promoting your hosting services.
- Billing software that makes it easy for you to send invoices to your customers.
- A fully fledged WHM panel that lets you control your individual hosting customers.
- White labeled tutorial videos you can publish on your site to walk your customers through different aspects of web hosting.
Will my clients know it’s me or the hosting provider?
Reseller hosting is a white labeled service, meaning your customers won’t know who manages the servers and infrastructure because you can customize everything your customers have access to, like their control panel, billing panels, etc.
Some hosting providers also offer white labeled tutorial videos that guide your customers’ through different aspects of hosting services.
How is technical support managed?
As a reseller, you’re obliged to offer technical support to your customers. However, you can reach out to your hosting provider’s customer service if you need any assistance.
Do I need to create separate documentation to help my clients?
It depends. As a reseller, you’re in charge of offering support to your web hosting customers. To reduce support queries, having proper documentation is worth its weight in gold. Although your hosting providers may have extensive documentation published on their site, you can’t refer your customers to them because your service is white labeled.
A reputed hosting provider should also offer you white labeled tutorial videos to help your customers in need. Once you’ve rebranded the content, you can refer your customers to those videos.
How much does it cost to provide reseller hosting services to my customers?
A reseller hosting plan typically starts at $19 per month. As your business grows, you can upgrade to a higher hosting plan with ease.
Is my reseller hosting scalable?
Absolutely! You can easily scale up the capacity of your reseller hosting to meet your needs. If you’re anticipating business growth in the near future, you can easily switch over to larger servers.
Congratulations! You can now select the best reseller web hosting provider. You may also want to read about the Best eCommerce Hosting Companies.
To add to that, here are other articles you may be interested in reading.
- Bluehost vs InMotion Hosting
- Best Free Websites and Resources to Learn WordPress
- How to Create a Profitable Online Store – Step by Step
The first article compares Bluehost and InMotion hosting. The net post lists the best free websites and resources to learn WordPress. While the last article teaches you how to create a profitable online store.
