If your planning on getting into the Webhosting industry in a small way, this is something your going to be asking yourself. You could start off by setting up individual shared hosting accounts for each of the sites you plan to host, but handling 100 individual hosting accounts is definitely going to have you pulling your hair out by the end of the day, let alone a week!

Lets take a look at some of the points you should keep in mind before choosing.

Why become a Reseller?

One of the major advantages of becoming a reseller is that you don’t have to bother yourself with the nitty-gritties of server management. It is up to the hosting company, whom you purchased your reseller account from, to manage the server and maintain its up-time.

You save on having to purchase server hardware/software, the control panel and any other facilities you use at the DataCenter where your server would be housed. You can concentrate solely on building your business and use the money you saved on promotions.

Most Reseller hosting packages these days come with some form of a “Hosing Promotion” package or tools that will help you promote your business, thus making the job much easier.

Even though becoming a Reseller may right now sound like a dream, there are a few things you should look out for before making a decision. First of all is finding a reliable hosting company to get your Reseller hosting account from.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of hosting companies out there. So be prepared to do a lot of reading. Yes, I did say reading. There are hundreds of forums and review sites to help you make a decision.

Finding a good one of those is difficult too, so I’d personally recommend starting out at the Reseller section at WHT. Once you find a company that catches your attention, search that forum for posts about it.

There is a lot you’ll have to read about, but the factors you should concentrate on are: Server up-time, quality of technical support and the sales teams/em>.

The other major problem with becoming a Reseller is not something you’ll have to worry about at the start, but something you’ll have to face once your business has grown.

As a reseller, you are not the Master of the server your sites are hosted on. You are still subject to the rules of the hosting company. Once your business has grown, the demands of your customers are bound to increase or prospective customers may want to know if your hosting accounts will support their site.

Or you may decide to concentrate on a specific market segment to carve out a niche for yourself. The types of sites you can host will depend on the software provided by your hosting company.

Your hosting company may provide one version of the software, but your prospective customers may need a different one. Your hosting company may be able to oblige and change the version for you, but this is subject to the other reseller accounts that are hosted on the same server as you are.

In such cases, you are at the mercy of the reseller. This is probably the time when you should choose one of the next two hosting options. Check back next week when I talk about going for a VPS or a Dedicated server. Till then…..stay on-line! 😉