Last updated on April 2nd, 2021 at 07:32 am
Web hosting reseller, South Africa is one of the most lucrative online businesses to run currently. The nature of the business puts it at the top of the list for anyone who wants to start, and it definitely has a huge potential for growth to the ones who are already running it.
Let us first get more familiar with what the web hosting reseller, South Africa entails.
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What is reseller hosting?
Reseller hosting is when you buy a reseller hosting package, and then brand it as your own and sell it to a specific audience who require the kind of services that you provide.
There is a possibility of having between 10 and 250 distinct cPanel accounts. A cPanel is a control that enables you to:
- Manage domains
- Publish websites
- Create email accounts
- Organize web files and so much more.
This kind of hosting is popular among web designers and developers who have a customer base. However, it is also a good option for beginners in the web hosting business in South Africa.
It poses a huge potential for profit as you can create your own packages after buying from the source as well as do away with most of the uncertainties that come with starting a web hosting business from scratch.
The comprehensive pros and cons of web hosting reseller, South Africa described below will give you precise details of what you need to know.
Advantages of reseller hosting
- Allows the user to focus on the business aspect of the services provided because the technical aspect has already been taken care of.
- Establishing your brand.
Reseller hosting allows you to build and grow your own brand and identity as you utilise the resources from another web hosting service provider.
- Cost effective
Buying packages in bulk is incredibly cheap. This is part of the reason why newbies in this field find it as a great option. In addition, you do not have to buy equipment, infrastructure or the technology that is required for you to be a web hosting service provider.
- Capacity to expand.
Reseller hosting is perfect for a website that has high traffic and many pages, or a business that has several sites.
It gives you the possibility of running different parts of your sites using distinct URLs and different servers without having to buy additional hosting sites.
- More Income Opportunities
You can make additional income from being a web hosting reseller, South Africa by selling add ons like:
- VPS hosting
- SSL certificates
- Dedicated hosting
- Dedicated IP
- Domain name registration and many more.
- Added Features
Compared to basic hosting plans, reseller hosting has way more features. Its control panel is also more powerful which allows you to manage your site more effectively.
To make it even better, companies provide unlimited SSL certificates and features like the cPanel.
Disadvantages of reseller hosting
- One stays dependent on the primary web hosting company.
Their quality directly influences the success of your business since they own the copyrights of the products you are selling, .
To stay afloat, you might want to get a web hosting provider that has a stable and powerful server.
- It can be quite difficult for beginners
If you are not an expert in running websites, the features and control panels of reseller hosting could be challenging for you.
- Restricted flexibility
This is mainly felt when deciding if you need to change the web hosting provider. What happens is that you need to shift all the data from your clients which can be quite challenging.
Even though it makes it more expensive, the only way this can be made easier is by having a VPS or a dedicated server
- You need to dedicate a substantial amount of time to customer service.
Even though you are in the capacity of a reseller, you are still required to respond to questions from your clients. The timeliness of this service is a great determinant of the success of your business.
- Insufficient access to the server
Most of the time you will have to go through your web hosting service provider for a lot of your hosting needs because the reseller hosting gives you limited access to the server.
How to start a reseller hosting business
At this point, I know you are at the verge of setting up a reseller company, therefore, how about a short review to help you establish the nature of the market you are getting into?
The reselling business started about 10 years ago and its markets share surged quickly. It was until the virtual private server was invented that the reselling faced a major competition. This is because the end-user now got a lot of control at a lower price as compared to the reseller account.
Now let us find out how we can get a web hosting reseller, South Africa account up and running.
Steps to follow when setting up a Web Hosting Reseller Business.
- So as to choose the most suitable reseller package, you need to define your objective by choosing one of the options below:
- Hosting your own websites.
- You want to learn how to program with it.
- Having it for fun.
- You want to start a web hosting reselling company.
Our focus on this article will be forming a web hosting reseller company. Most of the information cuts across the other options apart from the commercial part. Be sure to read along.
2. Set up a company which will limit your liability and exposure. You can hire an accountant or a company to help you take care of all the legal work.
3. Prepare your business plan clearly stating the products and services that you will be selling and your potential clients also, do a survey of what your competitors are doing so that you are in a capacity to surpass that.
4. Add privacy policy pages, service level agreement and the terms of service.
Look for the hosting reseller plans.
Key to Note
Find a hosting provider that will give you a 100% private label. This is to avoid making customers know that you are a reseller which would make them avoid your business. The web hosting provider needs to give you IP addresses to use in registering your own private nameservers hence your clients will not be mentioned anywhere on the hosting control panel.
5. Find a reliable billing system, for example, WHMCS and install it to the reseller plan you choose and configure it.
6. Ensure that you provide 24/7 excellent support to your customers. To manage this, you can consider outsourcing for a company that will provide sufficient technical support and ensure that all your clients get responses in less than 30 minutes.
Install an SSL certificate to take care of the essential need for security. This will keep your clients safe and away form the reach of malicious users.
Add trust seals at the footer of your website to make you look trustable. Showing that you have passed all the legal ecommerce requirements for running your business will make customers trust your business. Some of these trust seals include: McAfee, PayPal Seal, BBB accredited company and a seal of a PCI company.
What to look out for when looking for a web hosting provider
- Ensure that they are active on social media platforms, for example Twitter and Facebook. This shows that they are purposing to grow and have contact with their customers and potential ones.
- A blog that is updated constantly with resourceful content
- Statistics about their network, servers, and client satisfaction rating. It is common to have a few bad reviews, but they should not be more than 10%. Otherwise, that should be a point of concern.
- A live chat technical support or any other quick means of communicating to them. You have the freedom to test how quickly they respond to live chats and tickets; test them for about 3-6 weeks to confirm that the company customer support is consistent.
- Do not fall bait of the cheapest web hosting reseller packages as they may not offer all the essential technical requirements.
- An isolated control panel or cPanel WHM for every single user you will be serving so as to keep the installs detached from each other.
- Standard offers like free email accounts, unlimited MySQL databases, FTP accounts and free SSL made accessible to your users.
- Free domain names to be offered to your clients.
Wondering where to look? The recommended platforms are big companies especially when they are having promotions. Here, you can get a decent plan at an incredibly affordable price.
- Make sure you use an effective corporate billing system. This will help you automate the support and management of your customers which will make you look more professional.
- Ensure that you use private nameservers when considering a host for two major reasons:
- It makes you look professional
- You can easily switch from one hosting provider to another in the case where one underperforms.
In Conclusion
Web hosting reseller, South Africa is a strategic niche to start and grow your business. You can always be sure that there are limitless internet users at any given time hence you are assured of a market. At the same time, you do not need a lot of requirements to start up as seen above, all you need to do is to be smart in putting together the few puzzles that you have for a great running business.