reseller hosting

Reseller Hosting: Understand Your Customers and Pick the Right Plan

Reseller Hosting: Understand Your Customers and Pick the Right Plan

A thorough market analysis at the start of a venture lays the foundation of a successful business, and a reseller hosting business is no exception to this rule. To explain, a reseller host purchases hosting services from a larger host, then sells them to customers, hopefully for a profit.

If you are looking to venture into the reseller hosting business, you need to understand the needs and requirements of your hosting customers. Only then can you decide which web hosting reseller package is right for your business.

 

Three Levels of Service

Reseller hosting packages are offered as start-up plans, professional plans, or corporate plans. Each of these plans has a bandwidth space, storage capacity, and number of domains specific to it, as well as an attached MySQL database.

Most resellers are small-business owners looking for a stable white label reseller package that they can resell to other resellers or end users.

 

 

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO PREPARE TO RUN YOUR OWN BUSINESS WHILE STILL IN SCHOOL

 

Who Is in Your Target Audience?

In a nutshell, your target audience can be any of the following.

 

Web Design Studios

From an end user perspective, receiving web design and hosting service from the same provider is a convenient option. A compelling and aesthetically appealing web page design is essential. As well, the website needs the backing of a robust web hosting plan.

Through your reseller business, you can target independent web designers and small web studios who are looking to offers end to end solutions to their clients.

 

IT Service Providers

With the popularity of open source Content Management Systems (CMS), providing web development and app development services has become quite convenient. There are some mid-sized IT companies as well as freelance developers who host websites and web apps on behalf of their clients.

 

Product Companies

Typically, product companies do not use a reseller package since they usually have in-house resources to manage dedicated servers. However, in some cases, they may buy a shared plan from resellers to host a website for a specific product or service.

 

Professional Bloggers and Vloggers

Most novice bloggers start with free blogging platforms and then move into the customized domain for more bandwidth, security and disk space.  Professional bloggers and vloggers generally prefer shared plans to host their website on open source platforms like WordPress. A personalized domain name offers these users the advantage of unlimited theme, bandwidth space, and website support.

Typically, the hosting requirements of professional bloggers are not that complicated. All the backend process that involves server security and management will be the responsibility of the upstream host. You can then conveniently sell the hosting service under your name or brand.

 

SEO and Marketing Agencies

Digital marketing agencies that run online campaigns on behalf of their clients often seek web hosting packages to host landing pages for websites. Many resellers also offer landing page hosting packages specific to this target group.

 

Smaller Web Hosting Companies

To kick start your reseller business you might have purchased or considering buying a web hosting reseller package from a major web hosting company. Similarly, there are smaller web hosting companies who might buy a reseller package from you. They will then go on to provide hosting services to small business owners, independent bloggers and others.

 

Affiliate Marketers

A reseller hosting package is a viable option for affiliate marketers who want a reliable reseller plan to host multiple domains but do not want to switch to a VPS, or virtual private server, plan.

 

What Is Your Position?

Besides analyzing the needs of your customers, you need to gauge your position in the web hosting spectrum.

 

Are you a novice player in the hosting business?

You do not have to be a hosting expert to start a reseller hosting business. However, you do need to have a certain level of expertise and technical understanding so that you can offer services to clients with sophisticated hosting needs.

A start-up plan is your logical choice. With this plan, you can reach out to customers whose hosting needs are simple. Independent bloggers, freelance web developers, small design studios and digital marketing agencies fall into this target group.

 

Are you the owner of a mid-sized IT company looking for auxiliary income from a reseller hosting business?

If you’re an IT service provider, a reseller hosting service will be relatively easy. You already have the necessary resources and technical expertise. Presumably, you already have excellent in-house customer support, too. These assets will allow you to easily handle the hosting needs of a wide range of customers and clients.

Most likely, a corporate or professional plan that includes higher computing resources would be your best option.

 

Concluding Thoughts

Reseller hosting is a competitive field of business. In order to succeed, you’ll need to offer excellent service. In addition, you will need to budget for marketing and make plans to promote your business.

Additionally, you need a basic infrastructure that will support your reseller hosting business. Importantly, your hosting website needs to offer numbers to call for sales and customer support.

Finally, get to know your target audience and understand how your company fits into the reseller hosting field.