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How To Find The Best Reseller Hosting for Your Digital Agency


This guide to what makes a great reseller hosting platform will save you hours of doing painstaking research, and shows you how to pick the best reseller hosting company to partner with for your agency.

If you are a digital services agency or a web developer looking to generate additional revenue by providing web hosting to clients, you could lease your own server and handle all of the technical areas yourself, or simply partner with a reseller hosting company and let them take care of all the hosting issues and headaches, leaving you free to grow your business.

But…with so many hosting companies offering reseller hosting, which one provides the best platform for your agency? What should you look for in a hosting reseller program? What traps and pitfalls should you avoid when deciding which hosting provider to partner with?

This guide will answer all of these questions. You will learn what to look for in a reseller hosting partner to ensure your long-term success, understand the pros and cons of different reseller platforms and programs … we’ll even provide a list of reseller hosting companies with links to their reseller pages.

We’ll cover the following areas:

Let’s jump right in…

Pitfalls to Avoid When Choosing Reseller Hosting Companies

There are many different companies offering reseller hosting to choose from and you will want to partner with the provider that is best suited for your business.

Before embarking on your journey of research, let’s look at two common pitfalls to avoid when choosing a reseller hosting company.

Pitfall #1 – Beware of Affiliate Reviews

If you search Google for anything related to reseller hosting, eg:

  • best reseller web hosting
  • best hosting reseller program
  • top reseller hosting company
  • etc.,

You’ll find that all of the articles in the organic results section recommending the “best reseller web hosting companies” use affiliate links.

Most of the reseller hosting review articles listed in Google’s search results are written to help publishers earn affiliate commissions.

You aren’t necessarily going to find the best reseller hosting company for your business by searching Google, because:

  1. Most reseller hosting review articles won’t recommend companies that don’t offer an affiliate program, and
  2. The companies these articles recommend as “the best” are often the ones that pay them the highest commission.

So, when researching a reseller hosting partner, keep in mind that most of the articles listed in Google’s results are aimed primarily at lining the publishers’ pockets with affiliate commissions.

Pitfall #2 – Avoid Reseller Platforms That Won’t Integrate Fully with Your Business

Reseller Platform: Integrated vs Separate Components
Integrated vs Fragmented Platforms: What kind of reseller vehicle do you want to drive to grow your business?

Unless you have a burning desire to set up your own reseller hosting (and love tinkering with scripts, installing server applications, troubleshooting issues, fixing problems, and spending time reading technical documentation), we recommend choosing a company where the hosting and the tools you’ll need to run your hosting accounts and client sites is already set up, optimized, pre-installed, configured, fully managed, supported, and 100% ready to use.

This will allow you to focus more of your time, effort, and resources on growing your agency and scaling your business instead of dealing with technical issues and headaches.

Having someone take care of all the technical aspects of your hosting is great, but there’s still a business side to running a reseller business and there are a myriad of things to figure out, such as:

  • Which hosting plans and packages you’ll create to sell,
  • Which software and tools you’ll use to manage your hosting account and client sites,
  • How to integrate client billing and management systems,
  • How to provide clients with access and support,
  • How to formulate profitable pricing strategies,
  • How to handle various business legalities (e.g. refunds, site suspensions for non-payment, etc.),
  • How to protect your client relationship,
  • And so on.

Following these tips will help to eliminate many problems when running your reseller business:

  • Choose a reseller hosting company with an integrated platform for seamless client management.
  • Opt for automation to minimize manual tasks and maximize efficiency. This ensures a smooth client experience, fostering loyalty and long-term relationships.
  • Prioritize a reseller platform that offers automation, integration, and simplicity to run a profitable business with minimal effort
  • Avoid fragmented platforms, as these will be prone to issues.

So, how can you grow a profitable reseller business without all the hassles and headaches?

The Ideal Reseller Hosting Platform

Imagine having the ultimate dropshipping business where:

  • Your supplier won’t charge you until a purchase is made.
  • Your provider instantly delivers the product to your client.
  • Everything happens through a fully branded and integrated platform.
  • Your clients only interact with you, not the provider.
  • You get paid instantly upon completing the sale.

Additionally, imagine owning an automatic vending machine for selling digital products like hosting, domain registrations, site templates, and other services, where customers can visit your site at any time (even at 3 am) and purchase from you without you being involved in the process (or even awake).

Can you really own a fully automated reseller business that runs under your own brand, integrates seamlessly with your business, delivers your clients top-notch products, allows you to focus on acquiring more clients … and makes you money while you sleep?

With the right reseller platform … Yes, you can!

Reseller Hosting Companies – What To Look For

Take a look at the chart below. We’ll use this as your blueprint for choosing the best reseller hosting company for your agency or web development business.

Chart: Integrated reseller platform components.
The best reseller hosting company for your business should provide you all these components in a fully integrated platform.

Let’s go over each of the above components to understand how these will benefit your business when fully integrated.

1. Pricing and Profitability

When working out whether a specific reseller program will help you turn a profit, it’s important to look at all the factors that can affect your profitability.

These include:

  • Comparing the pricing structures of different hosting providers and analyzing the profit margins offered to resellers.
  • Looking for providers that offer competitive pricing without compromising on the quality of their services.
  • Finding out if you can set your own pricing on the hosting itself.

You don’t want a glorified affiliate program where all you’re really doing is referring clients to your hosting company and earning a sales commission. You want to be able to set your own pricing and sell the hosting as your own (and on its own).

With WPMU DEV Reseller, for example, you have complete freedom when it comes to pricing. You can purchase hosting (and domains too) at a deep discount, create your own plans, set your own pricing per product, sell hosting on its own under your brand, or bundle it with your services and sell your service packages with hosting included (your client’s hosting will be automatically set up when they purchase your service at the bundled price you have set).

WPMU DEV Reseller - Hosting Reseller product pricing screen
WPMU DEV’s Reseller lets you set your own hosting prices.

Here are other areas to look at that will impact reseller hosting profitability:

  • Explore potential discounts or incentives for resellers and consider the flexibility of providers when it comes to pricing strategies.
  • Consider factors that can impact your profits if overlooked. Evaluate potential setbacks such as set-up fees, recurring costs, and additional license fees. Hosting management tools like cPanel, WHM/WHMCS, Plesk etc. charge license fees, often on a per user basis. Some companies also charge annual fees for accessing their reseller programs, while others have no cost to join, but you cannot set your own hosting prices and have to purchase add-ons like client billing or white labeling separately, adding to your costs.
  • Consider how the reseller model of a particular provider will impact your cash flow when it comes to receiving your share of the sale. For example, with some reseller models you have to wait a month after a sale is made, whereas you get paid instantly with a platform like WPMU DEV Reseller.
  • Make sure that the reseller agreement you enter into means that the partnership remains between you and your client. Otherwise, your supplier can take over the relationship (tip: research web hosting forums for discussions between resellers about owning their client accounts). WPMU DEV’s fully brandable Reseller platform means that your clients will never know that their sites are hosted with us, so the relationship with your clients remains yours.

2. Quality Hosting Products

It goes without saying that any products you resell to clients should be of the highest quality possible, so choose products from hosting providers with a solid award-winning reputation, a long-standing presence in the industry, and loads of positive customer reviews.

After creating a short-list of the top hosting providers, look for reseller hosting features in their product offerings that include the following:

  • Server reliability and uptime guarantee: Ensure that the hosting provider offers a high uptime guarantee, as frequent downtime will negatively impact your clients’ websites, affect their user experience, and this will reflect poorly on you.
  • Scalability: Consider whether your provider can accommodate your growth plans and handle increased demands as your reseller business expands.
  • Additional features: Consider other features such as domain registrations, backup solutions, security measures, SSL certificates, and email services. These value-added features will greatly enhance the appeal of your hosting packages.

Consider also reaching out to other resellers or industry professionals for recommendations and check out user review sites like G2.com, Trustpilot, Reviews.io, Sitejabber, even review sections on social platforms like Facebook, and Google.

No doubt you’ll want to research WPMU DEV’s world-class web hosting, as this is the same award-winning suite of hosting products we offer to resellers.

WPMU DEV WordPress Managed Hosting Leader - G2
Resell award-winning hosting services from a leader in WordPress managed hosting services.

To save you time researching different hosting options, check out how WPMU DEV hosting compares with other companies.

3. Reseller Hosting and Website Management

So, you have found an excellent and reliable hosting company with top-notch hosting services you can resell.

The next step is to look for web hosting administration tools that will allow you to easily create hosting packages to suit your business and manage your client sites quickly and effortlessly.

Since the website management process is largely controlled by the control panels used in your reseller platform, use the following questions to help you evaluate the reseller platform:

  • Are the management tools simple, easy, and intuitive to use?
  • Does the hosting control panel provide an “at-a-glance” dashboard that lets you quickly see and manage everything and access detailed reports, logs, settings, etc.?
  • Is the reseller platform well-supported and regularly updated?
  • How much input do resellers have on the platform’s development? Can they request new features and improvements?
  • Can the client-facing features of the management tool be accessed from your website or do they need to log in from an external URL?

With the above in mind, let’s take a look at some of the more popular control panel applications available to WordPress hosting resellers for managing web hosting and client websites:

WHM/cPanel/WP Toolkit

WHM (WebHost Manager) and cPanel is a very popular choice for hosting resellers, especially among Linux-based hosting providers and server administrators.

WHM is a web-based administrative console. It allows server administrators and resellers to manage various aspects of web hosting, including user account creation, and server-related tasks including server configuration and server maintenance.

WHM provides a graphical interface for server administration and is often used in conjunction with cPanel to manage web hosting services and server resources for multiple websites in a centralized manner.

WHM Interface
WHM requires advanced technical knowledge to set up, configure, and manage reseller hosting accounts.

cPanel provides tools for server and website management, making it suitable for advanced users, and is known for its extensive features, robust performance, and large user community.

cPanel Interface
Use cPanel to set uo, configure, and manage individual client websites.

WP Toolkit is included with cPanel and is a WordPress management interface that allows you to install, configure, and manage WordPress sites, plugins, themes, and more.

WP Toolkit interface
Use WP Toolkit to manage WordPress installs and other settings for client sites.

As a reseller using this platform, you would manage your hosting account and configure your hosting packages using WHM, use cPanel to manage individual sites and features like email management, and file handling, and use WP Toolkit to perform WordPress management tasks within those sites.

While the pros of using WHM and cPanel include being very popular programs that are widely implemented, very flexible, and have extensive documentation, some of the drawbacks are that these can be hard to set up and configure, and require a lot more hands-on management.

Also, working with these separate applications can be a little overwhelming and confusing for beginners, and their interfaces tend to feel a little cluttered.

Additionally, WHM is dependent on cPanel, and cPanel requires paying license fees to use on a per-account and per-server basis, which can add to your running costs (many reseller hosting plans include the cost of cPanel licenses).

cPanel Licenses
cPanel requires paying license fees.

Plesk

Plesk Reseller Interface
Plesk and WordPress have similar-looking interfaces.

Plesk is another popular control panel designed for managing web hosting and WordPress sites.

Unlike cPanel which runs on Linux, Plesk supports both Windows and Linux servers. However, like cPanel, Plesk also offers features like automated updates, security tools, and WordPress toolkit for efficient website management.

Plesk website management interface.
Plesk lets you access frequently used features more easily via its modular interface.

The Plesk interface resembles more that of WordPress, with all features listed within left-hand panel menus.

Like cPanel, the Plesk interface offers customizable modules, so you access those that you use more frequently from the interface’s home page without having to go through layers of menus.

Plesk also lets you view its interface differently depending on how you want to run your reseller business with two options: the Service Provider and the Power User view.

The Service Provider view is the recommended option for resellers who plan to provide shared hosting services to different customers.

Power User view suits web developers and web designers who create and manage websites for customers who won’t be logging into Plesk. It  removes the ability to manage customer accounts, service plans, and subscriptions, and includes the Tools section, which contains various tools and utilities for managing your account.

If you are just starting out on your reseller journey, you’ll need to consider the cost of using Plesk to manage your clients accounts.

To use Plesk as a reseller, you’ll need the Web Host Edition license.

Plesk pricing
Plesk pricing for running a reseller business is similar to cPanel, but its licensing model is simpler.

As we will see later, many reseller hosting programs run on the above applications.

Open Source Control Panels

For more technical users, using open-source hosting control panels like Webmin, CyberPanel, and others with Linux servers can provide great flexibility and customization options.

Cyber Panel interface.
Open source control panels like Cyber Panel offer great flexibility and customization but require more technical expertise to run.

The downside of choosing these applications to manage your hosting and client sites is that you will need technical expertise to combine and configure the various systems required to run your hosting reselling business.

As stated earlier, we don’t recommend this option unless you really like tinkering with the technical stuff and want to spend time reading loads of documentation to figure out how to make everything work.

Proprietary Control Panels

Here is where we start to get closer to the ultimate dropshipping and automated vending machine model described earlier that will let you run a profitable reseller business with the least amount of technical know-how and hassle involved.

Some hosting providers offer custom control panels with unique features and integrations, tailored to their hosting plans and specific services.

The key benefits to choosing proprietary control panels to manage your hosting and client sites is that these are often designed for simplicity and user-friendliness, eliminating the need to deal with technical complexities, and allowing you to invest your time and effort into focusing on servicing customers and growing your business.

Additionally, proprietary control panels can offer cost-effective alternatives for smaller reseller businesses without the high licensing fees of general control panels.

For example, WPMU DEV’s Reseller platform eliminates all of the complexities of configuring and managing reseller hosting and websites for your clients as well as the need to pay high licensing fees by combining award-winning hosting plans with a proprietary, intuitive, and user-friendly site management control panel, The Hub, via an all-inclusive and affordable Agency membership, which covers all the licensing costs you need for your reseller business and so much more.

The Hub interface
The Hub lets you easily manage hosting and sites for unlimited clients and run your entire reselling business from one intuitive and user-friendly dashboard.

It’s also worth noting that web developers, agencies, and WordPress users consistently rate WPMU DEV’s The Hub as a leading WordPress hosting and site management tool, so WPMU DEV offers not only hosting products of outstanding and award-winning quality, but also the tools to manage your hosting and client sites.

WPMU DEV - Site management G2 awards
WPMU DEV’s The Hub is frequently rated as the clear winner in G2.com’s WordPress Site Management awards. Source: G2.com

For more details on everything The Hub lets you easily manage in your reseller business, see The Hub documentation.

Now that we have covered the main technical areas to look for when assessing reseller hosting platforms (i.e. quality hosting and hosting management tools), let’s look at what the best platforms should include to help you manage and grow your reseller business.

4. White Label Branding and Customization

The ability to white label services allows you to establish your own brand identity in the market.

Ideally, you want to be able to white label and customize the entire reseller platform to match your unique brand and have this all be fully integrated with your business.

Unfortunately, with many reseller platform setups this isn’t possible.

For example, if you are managing your hosting account using Plesk and want to make the control dashboards available to your clients, you can brand the Plesk dashboard with your own logo and make it clickable to point to your company’s website. You can even change the page’s title so your customers see your company name or other relevant text in their browsers’ title bars when they work in the Customer Panel.

cPanel offers similar branding options, with additional links to your support and documentation pages, and the option to add your logo to webmail and create a favicon.

However, your clients will still need to log into an external URL in order to access these dashboards.

If you want your clients to experience the full benefit of your brand, your reseller hosting platform should include additional brandable components, such as an integrated white labeled client portal, accessible via your own website.

This is included in WPMU DEV’s Reseller and is the next component of your reseller platform that we’ll explore.

The Hub Client - features
WPMU DEV’s Reseller lets you brand everything your clients see with your business and runs from your website.

5. Client Portal and Automation

Unless you plan to fully manage every aspect of your client’s online presence, you will want the client-facing areas of your reseller platform to offer complete white labeling options for your brand and be fully integrated with your website.

Additionally, you will want the platform to automate as much of the client administration as possible so you can scale your business and grow your client base.

Ideally, your platform would also automate various sales processes so clients could choose to upgrade services within their client portal without requiring your assistance. This increases your revenue with no additional effort on your part.

As discussed earlier, if your reseller platform is comprised of a mashup of third-party components where your clients have to log into a different URL than your website to access their information, this will present a challenge as it can lead to an inconsistent user experience.

With a white-label platform like WPMU DEV’s Reseller and The Hub Client plugin, you can create a fully branded professional client portal that your clients can access from your own domain without ever leaving your website.