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Reseller Hosting Guide
What is Reseller
Hosting?
This is when hosting companies offer their services to smaller
companies or individuals, who wish to resell the actual hosting services as part of their own offerings. This
is of great benefits for resellers, as they don’t need the hardware, bandwidth,
or IT staff to actually run the services.
Who would want to resell web hosting?
A typical example
would be a person or company who would like to own his or her own web hosting company? Another might be a web designer
that would like to offer hosting services to show his or her customers that they
support the "whole" package. Being a web host of sorts can be beneficial for
many different scenarios.
What
is Private Labeling?
Private labeling is when the hosting
reseller advertises his company as the actual service provider, and does not use
the name of the actual underlying web-host provider. This way the customers do
not know who the actual provider is, and do not try to go around the reseller
for a better price. In most cases, the customer does not even know that he is
using a reseller.
So I can create a web hosting company without having any hosting
equipment?
Yes. You don’t
need web servers, DNS servers, mail servers, or even a good connection to the
Internet. Many reseller-hosting companies supply you with the tools that you
need to be successful in the online hosting market. You can even find resellers
with ready-made templates that can have “Your Name” hosting company website up
and running in a very short amount of time.
How easy is it to set up and create web host accounts for my
customers?
This depends on
your provider. Most of them provide an easy to use control panel that will let
you control most aspects of your business. This makes the creation and
maintenance of your customer’s accounts quite simple.
If one
of my customers has a problem, who do they contact?
In most cases, even though you are not the actual provider of
the resources, it is still your responsibility to provide the first tier support
to your customers. You will have the ability to fix certain aspects of your
customer’s sites, but for the really technical issues, you will need to contact
your provider to assist you.
Exactly what hosting options can I resell as my
own?
Just about any type of
account is available for reselling. This includes shared hosting, dedicated
hosting, and even co-location. The available types will vary from provider to
provider, so be sure to find a provider that offers all of the plans you think
you will need before signing on with one.
Can I resell additional add-ons to the hosting plans I
sell?
Yes. You will find
that many providers offer additional services, such as extra pop3 accounts,
e-commerce add-ons, domain registration and transfer, and database support at an
additional cost. These additional features are normally available for reselling
as well, giving you the ability to offer your customers a full suite of hosting
options. Again, these features and the availability of them vary depending on
your provider.
What are some good questions to ask a Reseller Hosting Provider
before I sign up?
As
described above, some good questions to ask your prospective hosts follow.
Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to prepare yourself and
your customers to the kind of service that you can provide.
• Do you provide
Private Label reselling?
• What different account types can I offer?
•
What additional features can be added to an account?
• What kind of
interface do I have to modify a customer’s account, and how much control will I
have?
• How quickly can I get a new customer up and running?
• What
hours is your management staff available for problems and issues?
• How
often to you backup the servers?
• What kind of guarantee do you have for
uptime?
Glossary of terms:
Bandwidth
How
much information can be carried in a given time period over a wired or wireless
communications link, like the Internet.
Co-location
In
general, co-location is moving or placing things together, sometimes implying a
proper order. On the Internet, this term is used to mean the provision of space
for a customer's telecommunications equipment on the service provider's
premises. For example, a Web site owner could place the site's own computer
servers on the premises of the Internet service provider (ISP). Or an ISP could
place its network routers on the premises of the company offering switching
services with other ISPs. The alternative to collocation is to have the
equipment and the demarcation point located at the customer's
premises.
Control Panel
An
administrative tool provided by some web hosts to ease the maintenance of your
hosted website.
Dedicated Hosting
The Dedicated Hosting environment provides an exclusive server or servers
devoted solely to your web site. You do not share a server with other customers,
as with shared hosting.
DNS
The domain
name system (DNS) is the way that Internet domain names are located and
translated into Internet Protocol addresses. A domain name is a meaningful and
easy-to-remember "handle" for an Internet address.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is Web hosting in which the service provider serves pages for
multiple Web sites, each having its own Internet domain name, from a single Web
server. Most web hosting companies provide shared hosting. Although shared
hosting is a less expensive way for businesses to create a Web presence, it is
usually not sufficient for Web sites with high traffic.
Uptime
Uptime is
a computer industry term for the time during which a computer is operational.
Downtime is the time when it isn't operational. Uptime is sometimes measured in
terms of a percentile. For example, one standard for uptime that is sometimes
discussed is a goal called five 9s - that is, a computer that is operational
99.999 percent of the time.
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