There are a lot of myths and questions surrounding the reseller hosting business. We will shoot them down in flames for you, so you can enter one of the most lucrative online businesses head-on.

Needless to say, running a web hosting company is a very complex task with a lot of layers to it. That's where reseller hosting comes in. It takes all the heavy lifting off your shoulders. By definition, reseller hosting allows you to appear to your end clients as an actual web hosting company, while you are in fact “reselling” the services of an established web host.

You need in-depth technical knowledge

Actually, you don't have to be an IT specialist or a web developer to start your own hosting company. That's the great thing about modern-day reseller hosting programs. While it certainly does not hurt your chances of becoming successful, having a degree in the IT field is by no means a requirement.

We will go one step further and tell you this – a good businessperson would probably be better at hosting than a good web developer.

Don't get us wrong though. With most hosting reseller programs out there, you need to create your own hosting company website and handle the actual orders. When someone buys a hosting account at your website, you need to open an account for them at your actual host (whose services you are reselling) and send them a Welcome email with the details. This could be automated with an API (if the host provides one), but there is some serious web development involved here.

You'd need a script that would process the order and payment at your website, and then send a request (API call) to your actual host. In turn, the host would have to process the request of your script and activate the account for your end customer. So there is actually quite a lot of programming and coding involved here.

WHMCS is the most popular solution for web hosting automation, but it has its downsides...

The vast majority of reseller hosting programs use WHMCS to automate this entire process. WHMCS creates a storefront on your website and allows you to set up your actual hosting packages that you would be selling. It takes care of the account provisioning, so when someone purchases an account at your website, it automatically sets it up for them and sends them a Welcome email. It also handles the invoicing and billing.

However, there are two main issues with WHMCS. First, it's paid, so you need to pay a licensing fee. And second, it's difficult to customize your website with it. If you wish to integrate WHMCS into WordPress, you would need a paid plugin and it's still not a simple click-and-install type of task. Also, if you wish to offer domain registrations, WHMCS requires an additional setup as you would need to open another account at a domain registrar such as eNom.

ICDSoft provides a unique "Plug-and-Play" solution for free!

In trying to simplify the whole process and figure out how to help resellers earn more, ICDSoft developed a plug-and-play reseller hosting solution. There are no licensing fees involved. Our reseller program is available for free and you can start your own hosting company in a matter of hours without spending a dime!

You can opt to use the "hosted" solution and have a default hosting company website up and running for you with just a few clicks.

If you want to go for a more customizable website, you can use the "self-hosted" option and integrate the online store via our WordPress plugin or the PHP-based widget. We have step-by-step tutorials and YouTube videos on building a fully working hosting company website. They will navigate you through the process of configuring your online store, payment processors, and even building all the pages of the actual website. You can see the finished website at HectoHost.com, and you can request a copy of it under your own account, so you can just change some of the text and images.

Learn how you can start your own hosting company online and generate a healthy income using nothing but free tools.

You need a lot of money to get started

Another popular reseller hosting myth is that you need a serious initial investment to get going.

It's true that you need to build an actual website, and this could cost you if you can't do it on your own. Also, most reseller hosting programs out there are paid.

Don't be fooled by a low monthly fee. It's usually tied to a multi-year contract, and you typically have to cover the entire amount at once.

And on top of that, you do have to consider the potential cPanel and WHMCS licensing fees. These are paid tools. And even though some reseller hosting providers include them in their offerings, their actual prices are reflected in the fees you'd be paying. That's the reason why such hosts are unable to offer a free reseller hosting platform like we do. Simply put, we don't have to spend any money on such third-party tools and this allows us to offer a reseller program free of charge!

With the ICDSoft reseller program, you can start your very own hosting company in a matter of hours with no money at all. All you need to do is register an account (free of charge), and then create your online store at our Account Panel. You can refer to the screenshots below for a quick overview of the process.

Reseller Account Registration
Registering for our reseller program. Simple and free!

Once you've registered, access the Account Panel using the login credentials of your newly created reseller account. Navigate to the Online Stores menu -> Management, and click on Create Store.

Creating a new online store in the Account Panel.

Selecting the "Hosted" solution when setting up the store will create an entire hosting company website for you ready to accept real orders and payments online. You can configure it to use your own domain name.

Our "hosted solution" creates an entire hosting company website for you in just a few clicks.

With the self-hosted solution, all you need is a domain name and a hosting account (to host your own site), and it's not even a requirement to host it with us. You can see the end result at HectoHost.com. In fact, with our hosted solution, you don't even need a hosting account.

You won't have to buy WHMCS and cPanel licenses. We have developed our own Control Panel and our own automated account provisioning system that will get you up and running in no time and at no cost. Your end customers will have a Control Panel of their own without any branding and no installation or configuration required on your part. They can also automatically get access to an Account Panel of their own where they can renew, upgrade, and purchase additional services from our/your product catalog. ICDSoft would be absolutely invisible in this entire process.

Better yet, you can simply resell our existing hosting plans at your desired profit levels, and you will only pay us when someone pays you!

You must provide support for your end customers

Actually, this is not a reseller hosting myth. It's a reality with most offers. Typically, the hosting company whose services you'd be reselling provides support to you only. You are in turn solely responsible for supporting your own customers.

Of course, you could relay the questions and problems of your end customers over to your hosting company's support team, but then you would also have to relay their answers. All this going back and forth overly complicates and seriously slows down the entire communication process.

Plus, you have to be there for your customers 24/7. Web technologies are such that a regular update could lead to a serious website problem and business downtime. This could happen at night or even on Christmas. Your customers will be looking for help and answers right away, so you'd have to be available at all times.

ICDSoft provides "white label" support to your end customers 24/7

We know that when you are offering web hosting, business does not quit at 5 pm. Business is open 24/7 even on Christmas, and we are here to help not only you, but your end customers too! We provide "white label" support through our support division. Your end customers can register there for free and get assistance from perhaps the best support team in the industry with an average response time of under 8 minutes! No queues. No extra charges.

Everyone will know you're just a reseller

This is another one of those common reseller hosting myths. All modern-day reseller programs out there have taken care of this problem in one way or another. In short, the identity of the actual hosting provider is nowhere to be found. There is no branding on the interfaces (Control Panel and Account Panel) that your customers will access.

In our case, the Control Panel is accessible via the user's domain name - e.g. example.com/cp. You can take a demo tour of our Control Panel or check out the video below for some of its features.

A quick tour of the ICDSoft Control Panel that you and your customers get at no extra cost.

Your customers will also get automatic access to their own Account Panel where they can renew, upgrade or purchase services from your own product catalog at the prices you've set in your online store. They can access it via the Marketplace tab of the Control Panel. Take a look at the screenshots below to get a visual on these interfaces.

The hosting industry is overcrowded already

Let's trash the last, but perhaps most dangerous reseller hosting myth. Some people are "scared" to give it a try thinking that the hosting industry is too competitive and there are enough hosts already.

While this might be true, it does not mean that you can't make a living off of it. Like we previously mentioned, it's all a matter of being a smart entrepreneur and laying out a good business model. Your advantage over the well-established hosts out there is that you have the power of going local!

Everyone has friends with business or personal interests that require them to have a website. If you offer them the complete package - a web design service with hosting and email, you can have a very high conversion rate. Nowadays, people like to get everything from one place as that saves them time and money, and they also want a provider that's always there for them. Our hosting reseller program does all the hard work for you. So what are you waiting for?

Author

A web hosting provider since 2001. We host over 58,000 websites for customers in over 140 countries around the globe.