Reseller Linux Hosting: The Features You Should Know About
Website owners and developers make the most of their own hosting service by becoming a reseller host themselves. They divide their resources to resell them to customers who wish to have their websites hosted. These resources include but are not limited to the bandwidth and the disk space they are leasing from a primary hosting provider. Aside from this option, resellers are most often given the freedom to structure their plans and pricing as well as build their own brand.
One of the most viable hosting types that can be sold by resellers would be a Linux hosting plan that comes with the WHM (Webhost Manager) control panel. Since this type is provided with the ability to host multiple websites, this is usually the first choice that starters in the Web hosting industry and Web developers consider. These resellers are saved from having their own websites hosted separately by different providers of the service. In addition, they would have much less concerns of having their server maintained regularly and spend on hosting infrastructure. Lastly, this hosting type can oftentimes provide a creation of a limitless number of accounts with various pricing and plan features for the reseller. Most importantly, this type comes with a WHM control panel, which the reseller will use to control his or her sub accounts, and in turn will also give his or her customers their own CPanel platform.
If you are planning to be a reseller, then a hosting type that comes with WHM could be the right hosting account for you. Aside from the factors mentioned so far, you are recommended to set up a Web hosting business of your own even if your hosting provider will be the one to provide support for your customer base. It is best to have this checked with your provider.
In terms of features, it is recommended for you to discuss this with your provider and see what plan with specific features would work best for you. A good and a balance mix of features will help you operate your customer’s websites and, as an effect, will also help your business.
The first among many plan features that you can consider including in your reseller Web hosting offers is the control panel that you would use to manage your reseller hosting business. As discussed earlier, a recommended control panel is WHM. The backend counterpart of your customer’s cPanel would have features that range from:
- Server configuration
- Support options for you and your customers
- Language options for your users
- DNS sharing
- Account information modification
- Setting up functions
- Changing themes
- Mail management
- CPanel maintenance and
- Adding plug-ins for additional functionality of WHM
Along with WHM is the end user or your customer’s control panel, CPanel. This platform allows your own customers to have control over their website assets through the control panel. Here, their control permissions range from:
- Updating their contact information
- Changing CPanel theme
- Adding email accounts
- Backing up their website files
- Creating directory passwords and
- managing their site databases
Another part of the service that you would definitely want to know is the script or the CMS (Content Management System) that your provider use in their Web hosting business. A script in general is a list of commands for execution and later translated into a computer-readable language to provide functionality to an application that may be found in the website. CMS is software that uses a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for website owners and developers to easily manipulate the content of a website. Both the script and the CMS may have to be communicated to you with transparency. Other providers use Softaculous, an auto-installer that supports more than 150 scripts that support different content platforms ranging from blogs, micro blogs, portal, forums, image galleries, calendars, ads, mails, polls, surveys and so much more. Aside from this, Softaculous may override the installation of other auto-installers that are available in the market today. It also contains a separate backup feature that allows it to create a backup of the installations it processes.
Another integral part of the service you will be subscribing to as a reseller account customer is the uptime guarantee of the reseller Web hosting provider, and this can only be supported by specifications of the hardware that your provider is using. You would want to know if they’re using a combination of a main board and a chassis that are energy efficient and can deliver high performance.
Some providers rely on DDR3 RAM for the memory resources of their Web servers and Intel processors like multi core Xeon. As for your data, other providers have it hosted in hard drives based on SATA or SAS (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface) that are place as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks).
RAID works in a way where data is copied on two independent disks, which ensures that if one of the disks fail or associated software fails that may render the data stored in the other disk to be erroneous, then the redundant disk takes over so as not to stall the function of your hard disk. The implementation of RAID into Web servers also guarantees a great reduction in the possibility of losing valuable data and slowing down read/write times for your hard drives. These technical details may easily be overlooked.
Another technicality that you may want to check with your provider is their network design. Network design means how many networks your provider has to ensure the continuity of their service. Some providers have a tiered network design placed in a certain location and a main data center where majority of the customer data is stored. In addition to this, others have data recovery network sites where backup data is hosted by high performance servers.
As for Web server and data security, your host will definitely employ redundant security using systems and programs compatible to this type of hosting. An example is LMD or Linux Malware Detect that scans malicious scripts that are usually threats to reseller hosting services.