11 Best Cheap Reseller Hosting Providers 2023
Cheap reseller hosting can be a great resource for web development agencies, freelance designers, and programmers working on many simultaneous projects. It is not easy to compete with major hosting brands as a reseller, but you can profit.
There are many different forms of reseller hosting. Some are based on cPanel, WHM, and WHMCS. Other cheap reseller hosting offers white-label branding for VPS or dedicated servers.
Here, we’ll rank the best reseller hosting plans in the industry to help web design companies, developers, and entrepreneurs find the right solution.
Mục Lục
Best Cheap Reseller Hosting Plans
It is important to be realistic when evaluating cheap reseller hosting plans. Many providers offer ready-made hosting services for unlimited websites that include VPS hosting products, WordPress hosting, and dedicated server plans as retail eCommerce options.
The free WHMCS plans listed below are used by agencies to consolidate hardware, development, and support services. Make sure to review the full suite of unlimited reseller hosting options available in the industry before committing to a WHM account on a long-term plan.
1. SiteGround.com
Monthly Starting Price
$4.99
- Discounted plans for different workflows
- Ultra-reliable cloud hosting infrastructure
- FREE site transfers and WordPress migrator plugin
- Unlimited MySQL databases and bandwidth
- White-label client management and private DNS
- Get started on SiteGround now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.7
★★★★★
Our Review
SiteGround: Our Expert’s Review
Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more affordable reseller plan that comes with better hardware than SiteGround. The web host carries a stellar reputation for customer service and cloud-based scalability. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
10 GB SSD – 40 GB SSD
FREE (1 year)
6 minutes
SiteGround has three main tiers in its Linux reseller hosting program, which provides the same user experience and hardware as its shared hosting platform. The best deal is the Grow Big plan, which bills at $10.69 per month and includes a white-label branding service in the control panel.
- Linux Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $10.69 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 40 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: Unmetered
- White-Label Service: Yes
SiteGround was a major sponsor of the Joomla project and has also contributed to the WordPress open-source development community. The reseller platform at SiteGround includes optimized runtime support for WordPress hosting and other CMS sites through its SuperCacher utility.
The main advantage of the SiteGround reselling hosting program is that it operates with the same resources as its shared hosting plan and can be white labeled to support your brand identity while functioning as a cloud server for multiple websites.
2. Hostwinds.com
Monthly Starting Price
$5.24
- Per-account pricing format keeps costs low
- Unlock discounts as you gain more customers
- Industry-leading 99.999% uptime guarantee
- Instant setup with 24/7 managed support
- Unlimited bandwidth, email, and disk space
- Get started on Hostwinds now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.4
★★★★★
Our Review
Hostwinds: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
Champions of performance, uptime, and customer support, Hostwinds takes a slightly different approach to its reseller hosting. Entrepreneurs essentially add shared hosting accounts to resell to their clients, enabling you to take a hands-on approach to onboarding. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
3 days
Unlimited
New or Transfer
6 minutes
Hostwinds has four main tiers in its reseller hosting program, which range from $5.24 per month to $10 per month. The White Label plan has all of the features of the Ultimate reseller plan and supports unlimited domains, unmetered bandwidth, and unlimited disk space.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $10 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: Unlimited
- Monthly Bandwidth: Unmetered
- White-Label Service: Yes
The Hostwinds reseller plan works on multiple levels. You can set up client accounts on your plan as add-on domains and manage the hosting with a free domain. You can sell Hostwinds products directly to your clients at various discounted rates.
With the White Label plan, you have full control to use WHMCS to rebrand all of the Hostwinds products for any purpose, including the use of private name servers in support of client domains.
3. AccuWebHosting.com
Monthly Starting Price
$8.99
- Choose between Windows or Linux reseller plans
- VPS or shared reseller options available
- SSD storage with CloudLinux and LiteSpeed
- FREE management with cPanel, WHM, and WHMCS
- Unlimited domains, email, FTP, and databases
- Get started on AccuWebHosting now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.5
★★★★★
Our Review
AccuWebHosting: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
Blending performance and affordability, AccuWebHosting offers the full range of reseller options. Entrepreneurs can choose Windows or Linux, as well as shared or VPS configurations, depending on the scale of their reseller business. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
10 GB SSD – 150 GB SSD
New or Transfer
4 minutes
AccuWebHosting has one of the most advanced and complex reseller hosting platforms with options for both Windows and Linux. AccuWebHosting has a $115 per-month offer where you can white label the VPS platform to run your own web hosting services company.
Shared Windows server reseller plans range from $29.99 to $132.99 monthly. We recommend starting with the Bronze Linux hosting plan at $11.99 per month, which includes 5 initial cPanel account licenses and unlimited subdomains. Extra cPanel licenses are priced at $1 each on the AccuWebHosting reseller plans.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $11.99 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 30 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 100 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
The advantage of the AccuWebHosting Bronze Reseller plan is that you can start small and scale as required by your clients or projects. The Bronze Reseller plan will support unlimited domain names and can be used for hosting client websites securely.
Resellers can install WHMCS to create shared plans, sell dedicated IP addresses, domain names, and SSL certificates, or configure cPanel accounts for clients with unique login credentials and allocation limits.
If you need to add Windows or VPS plans to your white-label brand, they are available on the secure AccuWebHosting platform with unified administration of all client websites in a single hosting package. This makes it easy to upgrade reseller tiers as web traffic grows organically.
4. GoDaddy.com
Monthly Starting Price
$7.50
- Get products for 20-40% off retail prices
- White-label storefront with credit card processing
- Easy integration with WordPress via GoDaddy’s API
- Sell anything: domains, hosting, email, and more
- Custom software for management and reports
- Get started on GoDaddy now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.5
★★★★★
Our Review
GoDaddy: Our Expert’s Review
Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com):
GoDaddy gives you all the tools and products to be successful in reseller hosting without stepping on your toes. Set your own prices and run promotions while the company’s platform processes payments, tracks sales, and helps you build your business. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
Unlimited
New or Transfer
4 minutes
GoDaddy takes a unique approach to reseller hosting by providing customers with a complete storefront and allowing them to sell every hosting product the company offers. This service includes domain name registrations under white-label branding and cloud server products.
Developers can build a custom theme for domain name and hosting products using GoDaddy’s reseller store API service. There are two tiers to GoDaddy’s reseller plan: one with a 20% discount on all listed products and one with a 40% across-the-board discount.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $107.88 per year
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: No
- Available Storage: N/A
- Monthly Bandwidth: N/A
- White-Label Service: Yes
The 40% discount plan costs $179.88 per year. In most instances, it is recommended to pay more for the larger margin in the Pro Reseller plan. The Basic Reseller plan will only support up to 25 customers.
Web developers and design agencies managing sites for clients can consider the GoDaddy Pro platform as an alternative to reseller packages. GoDaddy Pro is a free service and can be added onto any of the GoDaddy Pro platform products: shared Linux, virtual private server (VPS), and email-only plans.
The platform also includes a website builder with free templates for small businesses to get started quickly with eCommerce store creation.
Best of the Rest: Low-Cost Reseller Packages
If one of the cheap reseller plans listed above is not what you are looking for, the web hosting marketplace is full of alternative, low-cost reseller options. There are advantages to each hosting company’s reseller system relative to different business models.
Around half of the plans listed below are offered to the web development and design professional agency marketplace. The other half is targeted at resellers who prefer to list white-label hosting products for retail sale to the public with eCommerce automation.
Which reseller web hosting plan is best ultimately depends on your business operations and project requirements.
In some companies, both business models can be combined, allowing web developers and software startups to build apps that sell hosting products alongside design and programming services.
The inclusion of a payment gateway with an automated checkout system works with many ecommerce and CMS scripts to build complete hosting reseller solutions into apps.
Review the companies listed below for more great offers on low-cost reseller hosting provider packages that can function like a managed cloud server in production to support many domains.
5. InMotionHosting.com
Monthly Starting Price
$15.99
- SSD reseller hosting with FREE cPanel/WHM
- Keep your reseller business organized with WHMCS
- FREE dedicated IP and site backups
- Tons of email features with IMAP and POP3 support
- Manage your domains with a FREE Enom license
- Get started on InMotion Hosting now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.9
★★★★★
Our Review
InMotion: Our Expert’s Review
PJ Fancher (HostingAdvice.com):
InMotion Hosting offers cPanel reseller hosting that’s affordable, easy to manage, and includes free SSDs. Become a domain reseller for popular gTLDs and TLDs with a free Enom license and WHMCS to manage your accounts. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
90 days
80 GB SSD – 260 GB SSD
FREE (1 year)
5 minutes
InMotion Hosting has a multi-tiered reseller program with the cost determined by the number of included cPanel licenses, SSD storage space, and monthly bandwidth allocation. The company’s Reseller VPS plan gives 7GB of RAM and 125 GB SSD storage with three dedicated IP addresses.
The plans on the shared tier include 25 to 80 cPanel licenses, while the VPS plan permits only five total licenses. InMotion Hosting is one of the most respected brands in the industry today.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $21.39 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 80 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 800 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
With InMotion Hosting reseller plans, customers receive the complete package of cPanel, WHM (Web Host Manager), WHMCS, Enom, and ClientExec. This is the classic formula to build your own hosting company using the WHMCS toolbox.
You can build your brand on InMotion Hosting since many of the most popular web hosting companies in the world also use this formula to run the same system.
6. HostGator.com
Monthly Starting Price
$19.95
- Start a company with cPanel reseller hosting
- Unlimited domains, emails, and MySQL databases
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and 400+ tutorials
- All web hosting reseller plans include WHMCS
- FREE ResellerClub account for domains
- Get started on HostGator now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.7
★★★★★
Our Review
HostGator: Our Expert’s Review
Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com):
HostGator offers some of the industry’s best reseller hosting plans, with WHMCS included for your management purposes, as well as cPanel for your customers. You specify your reseller hosting customers’ packages, disk space, and bandwidth. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
60 GB – 140 GB
New or Transfer
4 minutes
HostGator has one of the oldest and most popular reseller hosting programs in the world. The company offers five reseller plan tiers that are varied from 60 GB SSD storage and 600 GB monthly bandwidth to 250 GB SSD storage and 2.5 TB monthly bandwidth on the Diamond Reseller plan.
There is no reason to start with more than the basic account and scale according to the requirements of your client websites. HostGator’s system is based on Web Host Manager and cPanel.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $19.95 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 60 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 600 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
With the HostGator reseller platform, administrators need to become proficient in the use of WHMCS to create hosting plans with different configurations. These can then be priced, sold, and billed to customers according to the particular business plan.
Some companies use a website for checkout like an ecommerce store, while many freelancers just rely on direct invoicing. HostGator provides all of the tools you need to get started as a reseller hosting provider with a quick setup process so you can get to work immediately developing sites.
7. A2Hosting.com
Monthly Starting Price
$24.99
- Affordable reseller plans with luxury features
- FREE Enom account to manage unlimited domains
- Turbo Server configuration loads pages 20x faster
- FREE SSDs, CDN, and choice of server location
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 monitoring
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.8
★★★★★
Our Review
A2 Hosting: Our Expert’s Review
Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):
A2 Hosting provides some of the most appealing reseller hosting deals on the market. Enjoy free Enom, cPanel, and WHMCS accounts to get your business started, then leverage A2 Hosting’s impressive speed to impress your customers. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
60 GB SSD – 270 GB SSD
New or Transfer
4 minutes
A2 Hosting is the third company on the list to use the WHMCS + cPanel combination for its reseller hosting platform. However, the company offers special licensing deals for WHMCS that can be included at $10 or even free on some accounts.
The licensing for WHMCS is determined by the total number of users under quotas, like cPanel, but can also vary depending on the historical price structure that was in place when the subscription was started initially.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $24.99 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 60 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 600 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
With A2 Hosting it is recommended to go with the Turbo server option if you are providing development or design services to clients, especially for eCommerce sites. The difference is an elite hardware configuration with guaranteed low-density servers.
This means there will be fewer domains registered on the hardware, leading to a faster performance on I/O requests. A2 Hosting also has a VPS Reseller platform with plans ranging from $45 to $99 per month, along with a Managed WordPress hosting service that can be white labeled with free site tools.
8. InterServer.net
Monthly Starting Price
$19.95
- Set up unlimited cPanel accounts for your clients
- FREE proactive daily backups and no setup fee
- Private DNS servers and dedicated IP address
- Clients enjoys all standard shared hosting features
- Client management through WHM control panel
- Get started on InterServer now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.6
★★★★★
Our Review
InterServer: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
InterServer automatically connects your customers to the company’s full roster of shared hosting perks, including high-performance SSDs, a website builder, free migration, and Intershield security. Enjoy instant account setup and easy management on premium hardware. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
80 GB SSD – 280 GB SSD
New or Transfer
4 minutes
InterServer falls to the middle of “the best of the rest” list primarily because of its cost-to-value ratio. The company’s reseller program is also based on WHMCS with five tiers of subscription levels determined by the storage and bandwidth allocations.
Administrators will need to be familiar with making web hosting plans using WHMCS for its clients. InterServer provides customers with the option to use DirectAdmin instead of cPanel for custom runtime configurations.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $19.95 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 80 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 500 GB
- White-Label Service: No
Like HostGator and other WHMCS reseller programs, InterServer makes it easy to scale through tiers as your client base or requirements for storage and bandwidth grow. There is no need to start above the RS One plan unless you are migrating client sites and can already estimate the web traffic for bandwidth and storage requirements.
The RS Five plan is 280 GB SSD storage and 2 TB monthly bandwidth at $69.95 per month. You’ll have to pay a few dollars extra for dedicated IP addresses and private name servers on InterServer’s reseller plans.
9. ResellerClub.com
Monthly Starting Price
$16.99
- Choice of Windows or Linux reseller packages
- Hardware via Dell servers & Intel Xeon processors
- 1-click upgrade for FREE domain reseller account
- Unlimited Plesk or cPanel accounts with all plans
- 99.99% uptime guarnatee with distributed DNS
- Get started on ResellerClub now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.3
★★★★★
Our Review
ResellerClub: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
Known for a reseller program that has attracted more than 200,000 entrepreneurs, ResellerClub offers numerous services to those looking to start their own businesses in web hosting and domain registrations. In addition to serving more than 5 million domains and customers in more than 150 countries, the hosting provider has crafted among the most diverse portfolio of solutions that we’ve ever seen. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
40 GB – 200 GB
New or Transfer
4 minutes
ResellerClub is the most innovative of all the cheap reseller hosting companies and its entire business plan is dedicated to practically optimizing the concept.
ResellerClub offers almost every conceivable web hosting product across multiple platforms and standards, where each can be completely white labeled and rebranded according to the requirements of your business.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $21.99 per month (36-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 50 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 1 TB
- White-Label Service: Yes
One of the main advantages of the ResellerClub hosting package is the bundle of 25 cPanel licenses with the Essential plan. However, you need to pay $4 more to get the free WHMCS license with the Advanced reseller plan.
Unless you already have a WHMCS license, you probably won’t find a better price. ResellerClub has many other white-label product options.
10. GreenGeeks.com
Monthly Starting Price
$19.95
- FREE cPanel migrations and up to 80 licenses
- Customize your DNS with private nameservers
- Speedy page loads with PHP 7, caching, and CDN
- FREE WHMCS license and cPanel accounts
- Unlimited bandwidth, domains, and databases
- Get started on GreenGeeks now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.0
★★★★★
Our Review
GreenGeeks: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
With unlimited resources and hundreds of included features, GreenGeeks aims to impress both hosting resellers and their clients. Entrepreneurs can rely on the company’s high-speed infrastructure and free account migrations to get started, then use the included WHMCS license to scale and automate operations. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
60 – 160 GB SSD
FREE (1 year)
4 minutes
GreenGeeks is one of the best all-around reseller platforms that are available and the company will plant a tree every month as part of your order. The GreenGeeks data centers run on 100% renewable energy sources.
With GreenGeeks reseller hosting plans, customers receive the complete package of WHMCS, cPanel, and WHM with Enom and Softaculous under a single license. The brand is popular and well-established, with a good reputation for engineering.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $19.95 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 60 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 600 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
An Enom account is important to be able to register domain names on a reseller account. GreenGeeks adds advanced security and high-performance features to its reseller plans. All domains receive a free SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt.
GreenGeeks makes it easy to upgrade an account anytime your client sites require more storage or bandwidth. The customer support at the company is also excellent for beginners with WHM and reseller hosting.
11. HostPapa.com
Monthly Starting Price
$29.99
- Unlimited reseller hosting via cPanel and WHM
- FREE billing software from WHMCS or ClientExec
- White-label control panel and private nameservers
- Customize your clients’ hosting packages
- Wholesale domain reselling with unlimited email
- Get started on HostPapa now.
RESELLER
RATING
4.1
★★★★★
Our Review
HostPapa: Our Expert’s Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):
For a little bit of a premium, HostPapa will flood your reseller web hosting business with all the functionality you could ever need — and then some. Featuring unlimited cPanel accounts, email addresses, domains, databases, HostPapa is a solid option for resellers looking to enter the market. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee
Disk Space
Domain Name
Setup Time
30 days
50 GB – 250 GB SSD
FREE (1 year)
5 minutes
HostPapa delivers everything required to manage a reseller hosting business on Linux servers with cPanel, WHMCS, Enom, and ClientExec packaged together with high-performance hardware configurations.
All of the plans run on SSD hardware with licensed cPanel and options for WHMCS or ClientExec for billing. You also receive free SSL certificates for unlimited domains and integration with the Cloudflare CDN through cPanel.
- Reseller Hosting Plan Cost: $29.99 per month (12-month plan)
- Plan Includes Unlimited Domains: Yes
- Available Storage: 50 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 500 GB
- White-Label Service: Yes
You don’t need to pay extra for private DNS servers on HostPapa’s reseller account packages. You can also rebrand cPanel to support your company’s logo and theme. HostPapa manages the reseller platform on the same network as its shared, VPS, and dedicated server hosting plans.
Resellers can access HostPapa’s knowledge base resources on WHMCS and cPanel for more information.
Although it is higher priced than other reseller plans, HostPapa gives developers all of the keys for success as a reseller host using WHMCS and cPanel, along with a strong commitment to customer support through live chat, tickets, and phone experts.
What is Reseller Hosting?
The most common method of reseller hosting traditionally has been to rely on the combination of WHM, cPanel, and WHMCS to partition hardware into shared hosting plans running on the Linux OS.
Since many of the top brands in the web hosting industry operate on the same foundation of cPanel + WHM, reseller hosting is designed for small businesses to operate as independent web hosting service providers.
Reseller hosting provides everything required to manage a web hosting business using white-label products that can be rebranded and resold at a markup price.
By purchasing or receiving a free account with Enom, a reseller can also register domain names for customers at a markup price. WHMCS is used for billing in this combination, although some reseller package options will also offer a choice of ClientExec.
Some of the main factors you should look for in a reseller host are:
- WHMCS: for payment gateways such as PayPal, Google Checkout, and Authorize.Net
- Free Domains Resales: using Enom, GoDaddy, or another licensed registrar franchise
- IMAP, POP, SMTP Email: clients can check emails anywhere, on any device, easily
- Free Software Installer: Softaculous and Fantastico offer 400+ open-source scripts
Other companies, such as GoDaddy, offer a complete ecommerce store that can be themed and customized to support your brand. The store offers all of the same hosting products that GoDaddy sells at retail: shared Windows and Linux hosting, VPS, dedicated server solutions, etc.
With the first tier level, resellers receive a 20% discount and can re-price the products at any rate. For $70 more per year, the discount increases to 40% on all web hosting products. ResellerClub also operates on the white-label model for cloud server, VPS, shared, and dedicated hosting plans.
Storefront and white-label products can be easier to use in reseller hosting at GoDaddy and ResellerClub than through WHM platforms.
How Does Reseller Hosting Work?
With cheap reseller hosting plans, most companies offer a combination of WHM, cPanel, Enom, and WHMCS for a complete package that allows you to run a web hosting service independently.
Other web hosts offer white-label products that can be rebranded but are the same as the shared hosting, VPS, or dedicated server products sold on the main company’s platform.
The option to receive a ready-made storefront or build products into design via APIs can also assist web developers to launch custom solutions for startup business models.
If you intend to scale to become a web hosting company with retail customers, you are going to have a lot of competition in the industry. Companies like GoDaddy have spent over two decades building their brand identity with Super Bowl ads and are NYSE-listed corporations.
Operating an independent data center used to be a major delineation factor for web hosting brands vs. colocation options, but now many of the best companies run their platforms on public cloud hardware from Google or AWS.
Reseller hosting plans provide all of the most essential hosting products without the need to engineer them or manage hardware in a datacenter.
The bottom line is unless you are prepared to spend millions in marketing, it is going to be difficult to scale from a reseller to a major web hosting brand.
Because of this, the people who have the most success with reseller plans are freelance professional web developers and web design agencies. Consolidating your clients under a single reseller hosting service allows for account segregation through unique cPanel logins as well as unified billing with WHMCS.
By managing your margin on hosting products with clients, you can make an extra profit through the shrewd use of a reseller package in web/mobile app development projects.
Why Should I Get Cheap Reseller Hosting?
The best reason to sign up for a cheap reseller hosting service is to offer a combination of hosting plans with domain name registration to web development clients. This works both for boutique design agencies and freelance professionals with a limited number of primarily small business clients.
Regional web developers focusing on local business groups can also succeed with a reseller plan.
Entrepreneurs can attempt to scale a reseller plan into a web hosting brand, but it requires different fundamentals to succeed in the cloud era.
The main elements to look for in a cheap reseller hosting plan are the licenses for the software because large web hosting companies receive much better bulk discounting on pricing vs. retail customers with cPanel and WHMCS.
Similarly, even the use of Enom and ClientExec can be expensive to license if purchased independently, so make sure that these elements are included free in a reseller plan for the best value. White-label products are easy to add to service websites for most web hosting business operators familiar with HTML and PHP.
A retail license for cPanel costs $15 in 2021, whereas many reseller plans offer these in bulk packs of 10 for $1 each.
Enom, on the other hand, rarely offers prices on domain name registration to resellers that are competitive with GoDaddy or Namecheap, making it a questionable resource except for the fact that it is difficult to procure similar functionality from other providers.
It does not make sense to pay more for domain names just to brand and take an extra commission from clients, but that is the same model of competition that will be faced by resellers when dealing with any hosting product: shared, VPS, cloud, or dedicated.
How Do I Start a Reseller Hosting Business?
The easiest way to start a web hosting business is to use a storefront with a pre-made template where only the logos and colors need to be changed to offer a full suite of hosting products.
Another simple method for developers is to use an API to embed white-label products in a website with your checkout and payment gateway service. Otherwise, prepare to spend some time and effort becoming familiar with the use of WHM in setting up hosting plans.
Some of the major benefits of starting up a reseller hosting business according to A2 Hosting are:
- “Gaining a steady secondary income stream. Hosting tends to be a long-term investment, so once you’ve got some clients, you’ll have a consistent income stream.”
- “Subsidizing your hosting costs. There’s nothing stopping you from hosting your own sites on a reseller plan. If you price your packages appropriately, you could essentially enjoy free hosting for your own site.”
- “Low barrier to entry. Unlike other online businesses, there isn’t much of a barrier to entry to reseller hosting. All it takes is subscribing to a plan and getting the word out there. Your success is entirely up to your sales skills!”
Since the web hosting company is willing to provide white-label products for most of their services under a reseller hosting plan, the main point to consider is what margin works best with your business model.
Overpricing domains and hosting will not make sense to clients, but WHM allows for you to provide unique cPanel login accounts to different business account owners.
A professionally designed template customized to your brand’s specifications is a great way to get your reseller business’s storefront up and running.
This can be important for design agencies, programmers, and developers with many clients to keep accounts segregated over time or to build apps with different integrated scripts.
When managing a reselling hosting account, it is up to the business owner to bill and invoice clients. You can use PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, Square, or other payment gateways to receive payments.
The benefit of WHMCS and ClientExec is that they are both designed specifically for the requirements of the web hosting industry. With these tools, you can set up repeat and recurring invoice billing for clients on shared hosting, domain registration, VPS, and dedicated server plans.
White-label branding like Reseller Club allows you to establish proprietary rates for shared hosting plan services with a free domain to sell to clients.
It’s Not Expensive to Build a Reseller Hosting Business
Reseller hosting has been a major part of the web hosting industry for more than 20 years and during that time millions of people have used the services successfully in the management of business website publishing.
Reseller hosting is designed for web design agencies, freelance professionals in web development, and programming teams with many clients or apps to support.
The difference between shared hosting platforms and reseller plans is in the ability to rebrand products to offer them at any price to customers with a quality guarantee from the provider. The use of WHM, cPanel, Enom, and WHMCS on reseller packages is considered canonical in providing everything required to run a Bluehost equivalent platform.
The problem for most resellers with entrepreneurial goals is that companies like Bluehost have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing its brand identity over 20+ years with millions of currently satisfied paying customers.
In contrast, GoDaddy’s top independent reseller was reported with only 20,000 retail clients. Don’t expect to scale your brand immediately to compete with major web hosting corporations, even if you are offering the same products as a reseller on the same hardware.
Reseller hosting primarily targets the small business, web design, and freelancer marketplace as a cost-effective alternative to public cloud platform services.
Instead, use cheap reseller hosting plans to support small business web development and mobile application programming businesses.
Freelance web developers and regional or boutique web design agencies have the most success with reseller hosting accounts traditionally. The ability to bill clients on a maintenance account is vital to these firms.
Combining web hosting products with web development and programming services can be a successful business model. Scaling a cheap reseller hosting plan to compete with Rackspace and GoDaddy in brand identity is not a realistic goal.
Consider running WHM, cPanel, and CloudLinux at scale as a web hosting brand on AWS or Google hardware with Kubernetes across multiple data centers internationally to compete with major hosting brands.
Or build your platform-optimized runtime for popular scripts like WPengine. Use reseller hosting to avoid data center engineering entirely and offer a suite of managed cloud products for domains to B2B clients.