Dedicated or Shared Hosting?

Topic: Advanced Web Hosting Help |

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People who are just starting in reselling these days have a lot of choices. Do you get a shared reseller account? A Virtual Private Server? A Dedicated Server? There are a lot of choices. Each had their own pros and cons.

A shared reseller hosting environment is the easiest to start, least expensive and most effective way to start selling hosting. There are two options here as well. One is that you resell a hosting companies plans for a discount. The other is you buy storage space in bulk and create your own plans and pricing. You would have to decide which you like the best. We find that most customers like the bulk plans since they might be developers or designers and they may need the ability to create special plans for each of their customers. Shared reseller hosting plans also generally come with full support from the host you buy from.

A Virtual Private Server or VPS (these are sometimes referred to as VDS or Virtual Dedicated Server). Basically with a VPS you get a portion of a dedicated server. You get your own operating system along with a guaranteed percentage of the servers resources such as memory and processor. The advantage to the VPS is that you have root access so you can install your software and programs to your VPS. A VPS will operate like a dedicated server and you have added stability over a shared hosting environment since no one else can crash your server. The disadvantage is if you install anything to your VPS operating system and it causes problems you have to pay to have it fixed. Also a VPS generally costs more than a shared reseller account. A VPS will generally come with full support.

A Dedicated Server is a entire machine dedicated solely to you and your hosting business. Generally a dedicated server can hold anywhere from 200 to 500 web sites. You have complete control, generally speaking, over the server with regards to what you install, what you can put on it and what type of content you can host on it. You usually get a more bandwidth and storage space with a dedicated server, some places can you give you up to 5 hard drives and 600 GB of bandwidth in one machine. There are inexpensive and expensive ways to get a dedicated server.
Generally the low cost (under $200 per month) servers are “unmanaged”, meaning you get no support. You should have a good knowledge of the operating system that is installed since you will be responsible for any problems with the server. The higher cost servers (generally over $200 a month) you will get a “managed” server. The company you are getting this higher cost server from will give you full support.

For reselling we recommend starting with a shared reseller account and then moving into a dedicated server once you reach roughly 50 to 75 accounts. If you average $15 per account then you should be able to afford a dedicated server at that point. Be sure to choose a system that is more end user friendly than administrative friendly. Make sure that the host you buy your reseller account from has good support and is financially stable. We also would recommend buying from a company that is their own host and does not resell someone else’s services. That way there is no middle man to go through and you can have direct access to the best pricing that way.

As seen on: WebHostingAnalyst