Which Hosting Should You Choose – Shared or Reseller?

Creating a website is only one part of getting your business out to the digital world. The other part is to put it on some server and make it constantly present and visible. When the time to pick a hosting package for your website comes, you have to think of a price but also of a quality that comes with it. Shared hosting and reseller hosting emerge as the best solutions looking at the combination of an affordable price and quality.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most widespread hosting among website owners who run the website for the first time and whose websites don’t have heavy traffic. Hosting packages on a shared server contain everything you need to create and manage a website and email addresses and send emails. However, with shared hosting, the data on the server, resources, and available services are shared with one or more users. The server and resources are provided by the hosting company, while the users are those who lease some of the space and have access to the services on the server.

Depending on the total server space and the size of websites, there may be several dozen or even several hundred websites on a single server. Within each hosting account, you get a control interface – control panel (cPanel). Control panel is the interface through which you can manage your domains and subdomains, emails, databases, and everything else in connection with your account. Depending on a hosting company and packages they offer, you might have the option of creating an unlimited number of email addresses, get a free SSL certificate and free website migration, place a large number of domains, and register them by preferential rates or for free for some of the domains.

There’s a special type of shared web hosting thanks to whom you’ll be able to build infrastructure for your website and business easily and who can scale with you when you’re ready – MySQL hosting. Why is this important? Using a static website to promote your business is no longer an acceptable option for those who expect heavy traffic.

What you need is an open-source database management system, which is MySQL, to store all of the content of your web presence and hosting that meets these demands, which is MySQL hosting that comes with many different features and prices. Furthermore, using a database means that you can easily update content on your website and take advantage of content management tools like WordPress. Since database alone won’t get you very far, that’s where MySQL hosting steps in.

Such kinds of hosting services usually offer both free PHP hosting and also MySQL database hosting. MySQL is a free database management system but, as you have realized by now, you’ll need to find a web host that offers MySQL server hosting if you want to power websites built on its language – Structured Query Language (SQL).

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting            

• Extremely affordable rates: Due to resource sharing, the cost of this type of hosting is low. It doesn’t require high monthly costs and the service is leased on an annual basis.
• Ease to use: You are in control of all web pages or domains on the hosting package with one control panel. If you are a beginner in this field, it will take you some time to understand the way control panel works but you will be able to communicate with the tech support through this platform if some issue appears.
• Package upgradeability: All packages can be upgraded according to your needs and by paying the price for thee packages to the hosting company.

Disadvantages of Shared Website Hosting

• Not suitable for heavy traffic: Due to limited space for your website it prevents your web platform from
• Overflowing of one website’s problems to another: Spam emails or hacking attacks on one of the websites will affect the other websites because they are all on the same server, which may result in suspending all of the websites.
• Limitation in resources and file types: Many hosting companies limit the resources that one website can use such as server memory. In practice, this means that if the website grows enough to fill the available quota of resources allocated to it as part of the package, the hosting account owner would be forced to upgrade it to a higher package. As for file types, hosting companies limit the number of files that can be uploaded to avoid potential hacking attacks.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting packages are also hosted on a shared server, but this is a service designed for users who want to sell web hosting. Reseller hosting has become more and more popular in the past couple of years but that it is still an area of not enough explained type of hosting. Resellers buy disk space and bandwidth from hosting companies and allocate or resell them to their own clients. Their clients manage their hosting accounts through their own control panels, while resellers monitor all sub-accounts through their admin control panels.

However, it is important to note that you can use reseller hosting packages even if you do not intend to provide hosting services. For example, if you want to create a hosting account with a separate control panel or you want to get your own IP address or your own DNS servers by a reasonable price. That is because some reseller hosting packages include a dedicated IP address, while some also include its own DNS servers. Most reseller hosting packages include unlimited domains and even an unlimited number of accounts, which means that you can use a separate control panel account for each web site you place on that package.

Advantages of Reseller Hosting

• Making money fast and easy: Starting a reseller hosting business requires minimal investment, while the return of investment is substantial.
• No responsibility toward clients: Resellers don’t need to deal with things like the maintenance, security, and update of the server. It’s the job of the web host and also it is up to clients if they know to use the control panel and how they use it.
• Creating desirable service plans and packages: If you have clients who are interested in purchasing multiple domains or hosting above the average activity on their websites, you can make packages for them.

Disadvantages of Reseller Hosting

• Dependence on hosting company: Given that resellers buy hosting from an actual hosting company and resale it to clients, it’s highly important that you buy it from a good web hosting company that doesn’t have technical issues and that has quality tech support. If not, as a reseller, you will have to call them until they solve the client’s problem. In case you fail to choose a good hosting company it will cost you a lot of money to change the hosting company.
• Additional costs: In order not to lose clients due to technical issues, resellers have to purchase their own dedicated server or VPS, which will increase their investment.

Consider Your Real Needs and Your Goals

All in all, if you want to place one or more personal websites or your business website, shared web hosting is the cheapest, easiest and best option. Your host is in control of what resources are allocated to you, and you can focus on your website design, email setup, and domain management.

However, if you are a website developer and you want to provide your clients with hosting services, or if you just want to resell web hosting, or for whatever reason, you need to have separate control panels for individual domains, reseller web hosting is a logical choice.

Note this – what is better for someone else may not be good for you. You must consider your real needs and your goals.