How to Make a Reseller Hosting Website: Easy To Set Up Guide
Reseller hosting refers to a business model that allows you to buy hosting services from a website hosting provider and resell them to other customers. You can choose to resell the web hosting plans on their own or add them to your other services. However you choose, you need a reseller hosting website to house your hosting plan.
A good reseller website is essential as it provides an excellent first impression. Most people would judge the quality of your hosting packages based on the impression they get from your website. Therefore, learning how to make a reseller hosting website is essential when launching a successful web hosting company.
Key Highlights
Too busy for a long read? Here are the key things you need to make a reseller-hosting website:
- A business plan that outlines how to launch and manage the reseller hosting website.
- A reliable web host for your website hosting and reseller hosting packages.
- Your target audience and how to advertise to them
- A budget that covers the cost of starting the reseller-hosting website
- Market survey to determine the pricing range that allows you to stay competitive and profitable.
What is Reseller Hosting and Who is it for?
Reseller hosting is a type of hosting where you ‘rent’ server space from a hosting provider for a fixed monthly fee and then sell it to your customers at your rates. You can offer the hosting as part of your packages or as a single service.
Reseller hosting is an excellent business for web developers and digital agencies that often have to create websites for their clients. It is also a good business for online entrepreneurs and people looking to test the waters before launching their independent web hosting company.
- It offers all the benefits of a web hosting company without the need to own and maintain the hosting infrastructure.
- Learning how to make a reseller hosting website requires research and dedication.
- It would help if you had a reliable web hosting provider, a competitive pricing structure, a strong marketing strategy, and a business plan to guide your business-making decisions.
How to Launch a Reseller Hosting Website
The following are steps you should take to start a reseller hosting business.
Make a Business Plan
A business plan is a document that shows how you intend to make money from your business—in this case, your reseller-hosting website. Think of it as a guide that helps you to structure, run and expand your reseller hosting business. A well-written business plan will help you understand the critical elements of your business and help you make the right decisions. It will also outline all the essential requirements for starting your reseller hosting website.
While there is no right or wrong way to write a business plan, it is ideal that you break it into clear mini-plans for each aspect, such as sales, marketing, operations, pricing, and so on. Note that a business plan is not an encyclopedia, so it doesn’t need to have all the answers. It only needs to detail all the critical elements of how your business will run. Here is a rundown of what an ideal business plan should contain:
- An Executive Summary: is an overall description of your company’s name, organization, operations, and location.
- Hosting products and services: includes all the products and servers alongside pricing, benefits, and added services.
- Market Analysis: shows how the reseller hosting business intends to fit into the hosting industry and create its customer base.
- Marketing Strategy: outlines how the business will reach and retain new customers.
- Financials: describes the company’s financial planning and projections, and budget.
Find Your Target Audience
As a new entrant in the web hosting industry, you will grow faster if you target a niche audience and slowly expand to other areas. Some recommended target audiences include:
- Bloggers
- Web developers
- Freelancers
- Digital agencies
- Web designers
Your target audience will also determine the type of reseller hosting package you will get from the parent hosting company. If your primary audience is bloggers, then a shared hosting plan might be better suited to their needs. You should use VPS hosting plans if you are targeting web developers. Once you’ve decided on your target audience, you can easily design your products to cater to their unique needs.
Choose a Reseller Hosting Company
You must pay great attention when choosing your parent hosting company, as your choice determines the quality of services you will render to your clients. The best way to ensure you select the right host is to conduct thorough research. You can start by reading our guide on the best web hosting. You can also check user reviews on reseller web hosting providers and talk directly to their sales support team.
You want to ensure reliable web hosting performance. Other things to consider when choosing a reseller hosting company include pricing models, software applications, customer support, and hosting features.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of the best reseller hosts to give you a good starting point. Each provider has a wide range of reseller hosting plans to help you get started.
A2 Hosting – Best cPanel Reseller Hosting
A2 Hosting is an affordable reseller hosting provider that offers many premium features. These features include cPanel, turbo-fast servers, and 24/7 monitoring. You also get freebies such as a free Enom account for unlimited domains, SSD storage, CDN, and multiple data center locations.
InMotion Hosting – Best Reseller Hosting for Beginners
InMotion Hosting is great for beginners and those on a small budget. The web host offers free cPanel/WHM, dedicated IP and site backups, Enom license so you can become a domain reseller. Other features include SSD storage, WHMCS to manage your accounts, and email features with IMAP and POP3 support.
Have a Budget in Mind
Starting a reseller hosting website will require some level of financial investment. However, having a huge investment is not an assurance of a successful web hosting reseller business. You need to think about the critical elements of your business and the financial implications for each. It would be best if you considered the cost of the reseller hosting packages, web hosting and design fees for your website, individual marketing costs, and other vital expenses.
There is no downside to starting small. Many reseller web hosting providers allow you to start with low-cost plans and then migrate to higher-tier plans as your business expands.
We recommend that you focus first on meeting the needs of your target audience before expanding operations to other areas. This approach will ensure you only spend money on essentials when starting. Another way to save costs is to use a free website builder to develop your website.
Pick a Web Host and Domain Name for your Reseller Hosting Business
When you have written your business plan, chosen a reliable reseller hosting provider, identified your target audience, and created a budget, it is time to pick a web host and a domain name.
- Your domain name should be your business name with a .com domain
- You can go for a short version as long as it is memorable and reflects what your business is about.
- A .com domain is easy to remember and puts your business in the best possible light.
When choosing a web host, you may use your parent hosting company or another web hosting provider. The critical factor that would determine your choice is the quality of service. However, if you are satisfied with the performance of your web host, then consider using their reseller web hosting plans.
Build a Website
Building a website has become easier thanks to the many available website builders. You can use any of these website builders to create your reseller website and launch your reseller hosting business. Your imagination and willingness to explore are your only limitations.
Install a website builder
The first step is to choose and install a website builder. A website builder is a user-friendly application that allows anyone to create a website without any coding requirement. However, it is best to use a website builder if you don’t have web development skills. The alternative to using a website builder is to use WordPress.
Choose a theme
After you have installed the website builder, it is time to choose a theme. A theme is a collection of page designs that define your website’s look and function. Some website builders call these themes templates. When choosing, look for a template that:
- aligns with your idea of a reseller website
- makes sense for your brand’s aesthetic
- is budget-friendly (you can select a free theme)
- is mobile-responsive
You can choose from a vast collection of themes, but we recommend focusing on those designed for e-commerce. These themes often come with all the features you need for a fully functional e-commerce website. After you have selected the theme, it is time to customize it to your preference and needs. You may also need to add extra functionality by using elements, plugins, apps and other features.
Install plugins
Plugins (or apps, as some website builders call them) are tools you use to add functionality to your website. Some popular uses for plugins include SEO, live chat, payment processing, and social media integration. Some website builders create apps for these functions and require you to use only those apps. Others may allow you to install plugins from third parties.
Place content
Your website theme will come with generic images and text placeholders. You have to change those images to the ones that align with your brand and add content to your web pages. Some key pages you want to work on are the home page, about page and contact page. Starting a blog is also a good idea. Blog posts can establish your website as an authority in your industry and boost your search engine ranking.
Optimize Your Site for SEO
After you have installed a template, added the necessary plugins and customize your website, it is time to optimize it for organic search. Doing so will ensure people who search for your services can find you easily on search engine result pages.
The first thing for most people is to add Google Analytics (GA). GA allows you to track website visits and where they originate from. With the Google Analytics e-commerce features, you can tell which pages are getting the most hits, on which days and the keywords that bring you the most visitors.
Adding Google Analytics to your website is easy with most website builders. You are good to go by adding the tracking ID from your Google Analytics profile to your header.php file should also set your permalink structure to include keywords from the pages they link to. While you can do this later in your website’s journey, it is better to do this at the beginning, as changing them later could deactivate any pages you previously published.
Publish and Manage Your Website
Your website is ready to go live. Each website builder is different, but most will include a “Publish” button. Click on the publish button and wait as the website builder publishes your website.
Set Your Price
Your hosting pricing model is significant as it ensures your reseller hosting website remains profitable for a long time. Setting your pricing is more complex than making them high or low. It would help if you considered certain factors, such as your current client base, degree of brand awareness, and competitor pricing.
If you are newly starting, we recommend using low pricing to entice new customers to sign up for your plans, then charge more when you have a loyal customer base. On the other hand, you want to keep an eye out for the general pricing standard. If you charge too low, most clients will assume inferior hosting services and move to your competitor.
As a rule of thumb, constantly revise your prices when your customer base significantly increases.
Promote Your Business
Another crucial issue aside from making a reseller hosting website is how to promote the website. The answer is to promote it as just a regular web hosting company. If you offer the best services with other perks, such as prompt customer support, most customers will never know you are a reseller. Even those who know will remain customers as long as your hosting solution remains reliable and affordable.
As such, the best marketing strategy you can employ, especially when starting, is to provide solid web hosting. This approach makes promoting your business easier and ensures that the customers you attract become and remain loyal. Some of the marketing options that exist for you include:
- Social media advertisement
- Paid advertisements
- User reviews/testimonials
- Developing and curating web-hosting articles and guides
Support Your Customers
Customer support is compulsory for any web hosting company that wants to remain in business for a long time. You must support your customers from when they arrive on your platform to when they begin using your hosting services.
When done right, customer support can improve your bottom line. Your customers are your biggest advertisers. When you provide excellent customer support, they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand and invite others to try your hosting products. Inversely, most customers will close their accounts if they experience poor service. You should implement the following to provide reliable assistance that keeps your customers coming back:
Support Staff
While you can use automated tools to resolve customer queries, there are specific issues that would require human support. Ideally, you want to hire at least one person to handle customer issues. You could do this yourself if you are on a lean budget.
WHMCS
WHMCS is short for Web Host Manager’s Complete Solution. It is an automated platform that helps you to manage customer accounts and resolve issues without your physical input. The platform can help with processing payments, providing cPanel accounts, sending account information to new customers, and so much more.
Support tools
Aside from having a human support staff for complex issues and WHMCS, you can also leverage other customer support tools for small businesses. Some of these tools have free versions that would prove useful for your business in its initial stage.
Features Included with Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting packages come with varying service levels and features. Here are some essential components to consider before choosing a reseller hosting company.
White label solutions
White-label hosting allows you to brand the hosting service as your own. It is more expensive than private label reselling, which makes the parent company’s branding visible to the customer. However, it provides more flexibility for the reseller.
Scalability
You can quickly grow your customer base with excellent hosting performance, helpful customer support, and a solid marketing strategy. When that happens, you need to scale your server resources to accommodate your increasing customer base. If your chosen reseller hosting company does not offer scalable server resources, you may have to switch to a new provider. This transition can cost you money and time and affect business operations. Thus, you must factor this in before choosing a hosting service.
Control panel
You want a reseller host that offers a generous option of control panels. The two most popular control panels are cPanel and Plesk. cPanel is one of the most popular control panels because it is easy to use. If you are offering only Linux hosting, then Cpanel is the better option.
Plesk, however, is popular for Windows hosting. It also works well with Linux hosting. You also want to ensure the provider offers WHMCS for easy management.
Automated backups
Automated backups ensure that your website data and customers’ data are safe if something goes wrong. While they might cost extra, the peace of mind they provide is worth it.
Customer support
The best option here is to find a provider that supports you, the reseller, and your customers. This option saves you headaches and allows you to resolve customer issues efficiently and promptly.
Money-back guarantee
A money-back guarantee ensures you can recoup your investment if unsatisfied with the service. Note the money-back guarantee’s duration and the items not covered in the money-back policy.
Pros and Cons of Reseller Hosting
Pros of Reseller Hosting
- Zero requirements for purchasing hosting technology, equipment, or infrastructure
- The parent web host handles all technical aspects, including security, connectivity, server maintenance, and updates.
- You can quickly scale your business to accommodate more demand without investing in infrastructure.
- Some reseller hosting providers offer freebies such as cPanel and several SSL certificates.
- It serves as an opportunity for companies to build their brand and customer base before becoming an independent hosting provider.
- It can be a lucrative source of additional income for web developers, digital agencies, and online entrepreneurs.
Cons of Reseller Hosting
- The quality of your hosting services depends on the parent hosting company.
- You still have to deal with customer queries and related issues.
- It is not beginner friendly since you need to manage control panels and use WHMCS.
- Moving from one parent hosting provider to another can severely affect your business.
Build Your Reseller Hosting Website Today
As you may have observed, we didn’t include many technical aspects in this guide on creating a reseller hosting website. Your task is to set up the necessary infrastructure to resell the hosting plans to your customer base. The parent hosting company handles server setup, management, security, and upgrades on your behalf.
To recap, here are the essential requirements for starting your web hosting company:
- A business plan to guide operations
- Careful research on your target audience
- A reseller parent hosting company
- A robust budget
- An easy-to-remember domain and solid web hosting
- Pricing plan
- Customer support
- Marketing strategy to promote your business
When done right, a reseller hosting business can be a launching pad to starting your own hosting company with in-house owned and maintained web hosting infrastructure. You can also use it to improve your lineup of services if you are a web developer, digital agency, or internet-savvy entrepreneur.
Check out our list of best reseller hosting providers and feel free to reach out to learn more about starting your reseller hosting business.
Next Steps
- Find the most affordable reseller hosting provider for your needs
- Learn the best website builders for making sites on your own
- Learn how to make your first WordPress site
- Expand your knowledge of control panels