How to Choose the Right Reseller Host
Website owners who decide to start a web hosting business to boost their revenues with limited resources and investment have the option to go with reseller hosting. This allows small and medium businesses to rent space and bandwidth at an affordable price and effectively eliminates the need to lease dedicated servers at hefty rates. The success or failure of hosting businesses that rely on reseller hosts depends on whether or not they choose the right reseller host.
Several factors need to be considered before choosing a reseller. Here are some of them:
1. Reputation
The best way to determine if a reseller host is reliable is to find out if the company has a solid foundation and standing among the web hosting community. This can be done by researching the host on web hosting forums such as webhostingtalk.com or by doing a Google search on both positive and negative reviews of the host.
2. Resources Offered
Most reseller web hosting providers advertise unlimited space and bandwidth at cheaper rates to attract more customers, but what most users don’t realize is that there is usually a catch associated with these offers. Various limitations and restrictions are put in place to check the use of space and bandwidth. Although several hosts offer unlimited space, it is almost always limited in terms of the number of allowed nodes (files) that can be created on a single domain. Other restrictions could include the max number of MySQL databases, email accounts, FTP uploads, RAM and CPU usage allowed to the user. Plans which boast ‘unlimited’ resources do look good from a distance, but you might want to take a closer look before jumping the gun. On the other hand, plans that are limited in terms of space and bandwidth normally allow you to use up all of the allocated resources without imposing any of the restrictions listed above, which would effectively mean unlimited databases, email accounts, files and FTP uploads.
3. The Price
While most reseller hosting providers offer large amounts of space and bandwidth, it is important to consider the cost associated with these resources and choose the one which gives you more bang for your buck. Paying too much for resources that you won’t need in the immediate future is not always a good idea as hosts usually provide seamless upgrades in case you outgrow your resources.
4. Support
All web hosts usually advertise top quality technical support and fast response times. One way to gauge the authenticity of these claims is to read reviews on public forums including ones associated with the company as well as unrelated third party forums and review aggregator sites. Generally positive reviews usually mean the company does its best to live up to its claims as it’s a fact that pleasing every single client is a next to impossible feat to achieve.
5. Uptime
It is commonplace to see 99.99% server uptime advertised on sites. What’s important to note is whether or not the host supports such claims with accurate uptime statistics updated at least once or twice a year and makes them available to non-users. In the absence of uptime statistics, users do have the option to ask the web host to provide evidence of their claims and contingency plans put in place to deal with unforeseen situations to minimize downtime.
6. Platform
Individuals new to the hosting world tend to be oblivious to the fact that there are two main server platforms: .NET (ASP) and PHP. Which platform you choose depends on the type of sites you own and wish to host. If you wish to run websites that run ASP, Visual Basic or Cold Fusion scripts with MS Access or MSSQL databases, you would need to find a Windows web hosting provider. On the other hand, if your site was developed with PHP/MySQL or you wish to run scripts such as Joomla, RoR, need CGI-bin access, Perl and create Cron Jobs to run automated tasks, you would need to find a Unix/Linux web host. Luckily, many hosts are beginning to offer both platforms under the same roof.
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