A lot of web hosting firms offer reseller hosting service. With reseller hosting, the account owner of reseller hosting service rents out portion of the disk space and bandwidth he receives to other end users. Therefore, the account owner is like a hosting service provider to those end users.

In most reseller hosting packages, individual control panels are offered to end users. However, the end users of reseller hosting may not have the same level of technical support that other customers receive from established web hosting firms. This is due to the fact that account owners of reseller hosting services are not required to have extensive knowledge of web hosting. In fact, most of the account holders of reseller hosting are entrepreneurs who are starting up their hosting business rather than experienced webmasters.

Pros and Cons

Price is definitely the biggest advantage of reseller hosting. A lot of the reseller hosting plans are relatively cheap, perhaps a few dollars a month. However, as mentioned before, unlike established web hosting firms, the resellers might not be able to provide reliable technical support.

Conclusion

Reseller hosting is good for entrepreneurs who are starting their own business. It is a relatively low risk investment with limited startup cost.

For end users, reseller hosting is good if you are an experienced webmaster. You can enjoy the low costs of reseller web hosting. On the other hand, if you are new to hosting and programming, reseller hosting might not be the best choice for you. If you run into problems, you will definitely need some resourceful technical support from established web hosting firms to troubleshoot the problems for you. Sometimes, the price difference between regular web hosting and reseller web hosting might not be that significant.