What is Reseller Hosting?

Topic: Hosting Reseller Guides |

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A reseller is a middle-man who sells web space on somebody else’s server. Reselling schemes vary widely. They fall into the following categories:

(a) The reseller acts as an agent for the web hosting company. The service is advertised by the reseller as being with the actual web hosting company. People buy direct from the web hosting company but the reseller gets a cut if customers mention the reseller’s name.

(b) The reseller acts as a marketer for the web hosting company. The service is advertised by the reseller as being with the actual web hosting company. People buy the service from the reseller but all further contact they have is direct wih the web hosting company.

(c) The reseller appears to be a web hosting company in his own right, handling sales and support but ‘rebadges’ somebody else’s service. A customer buys web space from the reseller who buys web space (at a lower price) from the actual web hosting company. Customers contact the reseller for support.

A variant on this scheme is that customers are invoiced by the web hosting company in the reseller’s name and the reseller gets a cut. Support will usually be via the reseller in order to keep up the pretence that the reseller is a web hosting company in his own right.

(d) The reseller purchases a large chunk of web space and bandwidth from the web hosting company and can then carve that into individual chunks of space/bandwidth for sale to customers. Customers contact the reseller for support.

Contributed by Kamran Rizvi