Web host reselling - is it worth it?

Mp4 · 19 Mar 2017 at 16:48

Over the last year ive been giving advice on people wanting a website for ease of use etc. I tend to send them to Squarespace.

for a while I have used Vidahost and on their unlimited plan and use this to host a few sites for friends and then had me thinking that I could (re-sell) and try and make my hosting £££ back per year to help maintain my outgoing costs or even dabble in a little profit

as well as install Wordpress & website building etc.

£300 a year though!

is it worth the aggro?

touch · 20 Mar 2017 at 11:51

You'll need to try and estimate how many customers you're likely to get and how much time you'll spend setting up and looking after each website to work out if the hourly rate is worthwhile to you. You're unlikely to be reselling to anybody who knows what they're doing (if they can set it up themself, they'll be able to find it cheaper from one of the big players) so it might take up a lot more of your time than you think.

IMO, hosting alone is not worth the stress. You're going to get the blame if anything goes wrong with the vidahost service you're using. Especially when it's so cheap these days.

Mp4 · 20 Mar 2017 at 16:18

A few people know what they are doing with wordpress and with the Vidahost support is 24/7 with any issues potential clients have etc. I do plan on giving them a drag and drop wordpress builder and if they need help setting up eCommerce and whatnot.

Vidahost don't really give much advice on what you can sell at what price i guess its down to me.

bloodiedathame · 20 Mar 2017 at 16:23

I do a bit of reseller stuff on the side, mainly did it to get wholesale hosting prices for myself (this was about 10 years ago). Don't make any worthwhile money from it personally. It's a bit of a hassle to be quite honest. I do it through resellerspanel.com

Beansprout · 22 Mar 2017 at 14:22

People told me/us it wasn't worth it back in 2003. Paragon now hosts $_lots of websites.

So, yea...maybe....but only if you want to give your life to it! Otherwise....don't let your clients rely on you and use affiliate programs instead so that your clients sign up directly with $provider and you get a cut of the referral.

d_brennen · 22 Mar 2017 at 14:26

I occasionally help sell such services, but only act as a middle man between the customer, website designer (offshore) and host. Usually I charge an arm and a leg too, because it's quite a lot of hassle when you have fussy customers who don't really know what they want.