Reseller hosting is one type of web hosting. Here the account owner may divide up their selected hard drive space and bandwidth and resell web hosting. Web Hosting companies may make an arrangement with a reseller. According to this agreement a hosting reseller purchases hosting services from a provider, and then sells these services on to his own customers for a profit.

Usually, resellers are web consultants who are also web developers and designers and a web or a system-integration company. Web hosting for them is an extra service along with other host of services.

Reseller arrangements may vary. Here are the three most common reseller arrangements:

The affiliate arrangement:

This is the most widespread agreement between hosting company and the reseller. The reseller places a link on his web-site or in his email to the host’s Web Site and is credited for every visitor that clicks to the hosting company the reseller has signed an agreement with and makes a purchase of some web hosting service. This is a typical affiliate relationship.

The reseller sets up his own web-site and resells hosting services as a ‘sideline’. Reseller receives a commission for every completed sale (for example a web-designer who resells hosting services as a ‘sideline’).

The reseller purchases the host’s services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. In order to achieve this the reseller may rent a dedicated server from a hosting company or resell shared hosting services. If the latter is the case the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to his own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company he signed for a reseller account with.

Web hosting provider often gives a discount of 15 percent or more to the resellers on the price of a reseller hosting account.

Web hosting resellers are normally not in charge of maintaining web server services or other maintenance related responsibilities but just a ‘web hosting provider.’ In cases of any technical problems, such as server down and access problem, the responsibility falls on the owner of the dedicated server in which the reseller host is hosted.

Generally, a web hosting reseller can set up its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its own brand name.

Web host reselling is made very easy through ‘GUI Control Panels’ (Graphical User Interface). Some of the reseller programs offer customs Control Panel for their reseller’s customers, but a major part of the reseller programs offer the popular, well-known Control Panels.