Reseller hosting is much better than shared hosting

It’s a common progression. You begin with a single domain name, perhaps for a small business or a hobby site. You obtain a shared hosting account for it. At some point you add another domain name, for another site or perhaps for a friend or family member, and maybe a third. Then you’re faced with managing several shared hosting accounts. There is a better way: a reseller hosting account.

A reseller hosting account is rather like a large, master hosting account. It has all the features of shared hosting, plus a whole lot of additional features. It also allows you to create multiple shared hosting accounts, under the control of the master or reseller account.

Originally reseller hosting was created as a way to enable small-scale web hosting businesses. Even a one-person business can, with reseller hosting, create and sell shared hosting. However, I believe that the real value of reseller hosting has nothing to do with reselling.

While I currently use a WebHostingBuzz VPS (Virtual Private Server) plan, I used reseller hosting for years. I could easily go back to a reseller hosting account, but I could never return to shared hosting.

Reseller hosting is not just for resellers, and I think that the plans should not even be called “reseller” as they have broad appeal beyond people who resell. Think of them not as plans for people reselling web hosting, but as plans for anyone who wants an easier and more powerful way to manage multiple domains, web sites and hosting accounts.

As soon as you have more than two or three domains reseller hosting is, in my opinion, a much better choice than shared hosting. A reseller plan is more flexible, offers greater control, many more features, and is easier to manage than multiple shared hosting plans. With a single login, I can manage my reseller account and all its subsidiary “client” accounts. Each account I create is a full shared hosting account with its own cPanel control panel, its own e-mail, web directory, stats, etc.

One of the cool added features of a reseller account is personal nameservers. This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest advantages of a reseller account. Instead of using nameservers provided by your host, with their name in the domain name, you may create your own nameservers branded to your reseller domain. If your main reseller domain is “AcePro.com”, you may create ns1.AcePro.com and ns2.AcePro.com. You can configure all your “client” accounts to use ns1. and ns2.AcePro.com as their nameservers.

If you’ve ever had to move several domains to a new host or a new server with your existing host, you’ll know how much work it is. You must change the nameserver list for each domain individually at the domain registrar. With personal nameservers, you need only register the new IP addresses for your personal nameservers, and all client domains will resolve to the new location automatically based on your personal nameservers.

Here are some of the advantages of a reseller account over regular shared hosting:

• Manage all your domains and cPanel accounts from a single login.
• Pay one monthly (or annual) bill, instead of several.
• Greater control. You may set disk space usage and bandwidth limits for each account or for groups of accounts.
• Create your own self-signed SSL certificates.
• Create hosting accounts to resell, as each of your clients will have his/her own cPanel account and login. This can be a great option to provide hosting accounts to friends and family, even if you don’t charge for them.
• Personal nameservers.
• Skeleton directory, to automatically provide consistent setup of files in newly created accounts. (More on this in a future blog post.)

If you currently manage a few domains, or plan to, do yourself a favour and look at a reseller account. Once you enjoy the benefits of a reseller account, you’ll never go back to regular shared hosting.