Picking the right hosting: shared vs reseller

If choosing the right hosting plan for your online needs can be tricky even for some of the techie guys I don’t want to know how it is for the average Joe.

Let’s quickly define the most common types:

Shared Hosting

You’re basically sharing a server with a ton of other guys and if your neighbor is a spammer, you are surely going down with him as well as you’re sharing IP’s, is that simple.

Reseller Hosting

Same scenario as above, you have a shared IP but you’re able to have several cpanel accounts and can sell hosting accounts as well.

This is a very profitable way if you can build small sites and then flip them over at places like Flippa or DigitalPoint.

(One of the advantages of having a reseller account against a shared account is that you can keep every domain under its own cpanel)

VPS Hosting

This is something between shared and dedicated, you do have neighbors however, your server is a virtual unit and you have complete root access to install whatever script you may need at that level.

Basically allows you to run a fully managed server without robbing the bank.

Dedicated Hosting

This is THE ultimate server service.

If you want to be 100% sure your business is not mixing with anyone else’s, want to have everything secure and have total control over your stuff, then this is your ticket to sleeping like a baby at nights.

If your last name is Filsaime, Kern or Chow, you’re probably already using this very same service.

Now, to choose between the Shared vs Reseller account, it will depend basically on what your needs are:

Shared Account:

Provides unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, can win up to $125 per client (as an affiliate) considering that you get 21+ new customers in a month.

Reseller Account:

Provides limited space, limited bandwitdh, you get 100% profits (as a reseller) from every client while paying a very small recurrent fee to HostGator BUT you have to have someone technical behind that service because you do have to maintain it.

You also get to create your own packages and you set up how low or how high you want to charge for your hosting services.

In case something goes wrong, you have to be able to add more space to accounts as well assigning more bandwidth, in other words, you have to constantly monitor your accounts.

Final thoughts on Shared vs Reseller Accounts:

If you never plan to sell sites (flip them) or resell services like hosting then your best bet is to go with a shared account.

You'll never have to worry about disk space or bandwidth and you can also earn some real cash while promoting the services as an affiliate (this is free and you don't actually need to have a hosting plan to promote these kind of services)

If you like buying sites and then making them better and selling them for a higher price, then a reseller account is more likely to have.

You can give away the buyer its own user and password with his own cpanel account and you can even offer to host the site for free one month so they can download the site to their own hosting account.

If they choose to leave the site hosted right there with you, then you can provide more value by selling them hosting for as long as they require it.

Hope you liked this article!