Reseller hosting is a lucrative way to make money. Reseller hosting is when someone or an organization lease or buys servers from a web hosting provider. After making the purchase, the individual or the company can sell that space to a third party. They can also provide additional web hosting service to their customers, depending on the type of package bought. If you are considering using this as a way to make some extra cash, or to start your own business it is important that you weigh the pros and cons before making such a huge decision.

Pros

One of the biggest pros is that it is relatively cheap to start as web hosting plans for resellers are smartly priced. You also do not have to worry about purchasing technology, infrastructure, and equipment that is usually required when you are web hosting. All of that comes from the parent web hosting service, which takes the pressure off of you.

Another great thing about being a reseller is you have a bigger company with more resources to provide server maintenance, connectivity, and security. It is the parent company’s responsibility to provide you with all of those things so that you can focus on running your business. Essentially, you have the option of outsourcing all of the technical tasks that come with being a reseller.

Let us say that you have a customer that gets a lot of traffic to their website. If you are a reseller, you can run different parts of your website from more than one URL as well as different servers. You can do all of this without having to buy more space or more servers.

Since you will be a reseller you will have access to more features. More features mean you can offer more services to your customers.

Cons

One of the main drawbacks of using reseller hosting is that you are solely depending on the parent web hosting company. The success of the parent company is your success, even if you have the technical know-how to get things done. If your parent company’s servers are always down, guess what? So are your servers. This can negatively impact your business.

Another con to consider is that you may still have to provide some level of customer service. Some parent web hosting services can provide you with a team of people strictly for customer service, but you may still have to answer questions. Ignoring these questions, no matter how taxing, can be detrimental to the success of your business.

There may also be a bit of a technical learning curve if you are not familiar with the basics of web hosting. Some of the features and control panels may be difficult to navigate. Also, keep in mind that you will have limited access to the server, which makes doing things without the help of your service provider much more difficult. If you believe you will be changing service providers at any time, it is recommended that you get a dedicated server or VPS.