Reseller hosting

From ArticleWorld

Reseller hosting is a web hosting method where an account owner uses his allocated bandwidth and hard drive space to resell web hosting services himself.

This is a quite common technique nowadays, especially as it is very easy to get started with it. It requires little technical knowledge or staff, since many primary web hosters provide easy-to-use graphical user interfaces to their subscribers. Reseller hosts usually don't have to maintain their own webserver and often don't have to provide much technical support either.

Usage

Reseller hosting is a common technique for project-related websites. For example, a website related to a niche domain like computer emulators may offer its registered users the possibility of hosting their own websites for a fee. This raises some money for the hoster, and probably increases their search engine rank as well, often for a not too radical increase in storage space and bandwidth.

Some web hosters forbid reselling services by their subscribers, but this is not a common practice, since it does not do any harm to the primary hoster anyway. However, there are some disadvantages involved. For example, if the reseller's bandwidth is limited and there is no way for him to limit the bandwidth usage of the clients to which he resells the service, all other clients will be affected.