Linux reseller hosting

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Running your own Linux reseller hosting business can seem like an intimidating proposition.

In order to help get you started, let’s quickly talk about what Linux reseller hosting is, and a few tips to get you headed in the right direction.

What is Linux Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is similar to renting out a room in your house or apartment.  You get a your own Linux server space and then divide it up into smaller sections and rent out those sections.

Your customers treat you like you are the hosting company; however, all of the technical aspects are still taken care of by the parent company (the company you are renting your server from).  Essentially, you are the middle man.

Quick Tips to a Successful Linux Reseller Hosting Business

Here are a few quick tips that will help you succeed:

1.    Start Small

The number one mistake is that most new resellers start off aiming for the stars and when they don’t get there in the first month, they get frustrated and quit.  All you need to do is concentrate on adding one client at a time.

Plus, if you got 100 new clients the first day, do you really think that you could effectively handle each one right away?

2.    Get The Tools

When running a Linux reseller hosting business, it is important to understand that you will be dealing with all aspects of running a business from advertising to client management and billing.

There are certain tools that will make managing your clients and billing a much easier process.  In fact, many hosting companies that offer reseller accounts have a great package of tools to help you get started.

3.    Don’t Forget About Marketing

So many resellers get caught up dealing with the technical aspects of hosting, even if they don’t need to, and never get around to actually marketing.

If your potential customers don’t know who you are or what you are offering, then they will never use your service.  It is important to not get so caught up in planning for the future that you forget about today.

4.    Get Your Own Server… Eventually

In the long run, getting your own Linux server will drastically improve your bottom line.  However, this may not be something that you want to do right away.

First, you need to consider what would happen if you buy a server, or servers, right away and your business never gets off the ground. How will you recoup the investment that you put into the server?

The second thing to consider is that running and maintaining your own server takes a lot of work, especially when making sure that they are always up and running and well-maintained (especially when it comes to security and updated software).  This does take a bit of technical skill.

So while you should definitely invest in a server, it shouldn’t be done right away.

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cPanel Reseller Hosting

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When it comes to running a reseller hosting business, many people turn to cPanel.  cPanel reseller hosting has several advantages over using other popular platforms.

The Cpanel market share has continued to grow, and looks to be a dominant force for years to come.

Advantages of cPanel Reseller Hosting

Here are some of the advantages of cPanel reseller web hosting:

1.    Popularity

If you are just starting your reseller business, it is often useful to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, while remaining versatile.  cPanel is a well known platform that most people not only recognize, but are comfortable with.  By leveraging the popularity of cPanel, you can more easily attract additional clients.

2.    Lower Overhead

When you choose to be a cPanel reseller hosting provider, you have the advantage of needing less overhead than with many of the alternatives.  Your customers, using cPanel, will be able to update their contact information, backup their website, change passwords, view their own error logs, and much more.

This makes it easier for your system administrators and support staff to focus on other aspects of the hosting experience.

3.    Allows Customers to Track Themselves

Another advantage of being a cPanel hosting reseller is that your customers get important real-time data.

Your customers will be able to instantly see a number of statistics about their website including: disk space used/available, bandwidth used/available, sql resources used/available, email resources, and domain information.

This lets them know when they will need more resources and makes it easier for them to know when they need to upgrade their package.

Using WHIM News, you can also send messages to any domain owner on the server.  This makes communication much easier, especially with time sensitive information such as scheduled downtime or security issues.

4.    Increased Security

Since all of your users will be utilizing cPanel, they will only be able to control their own domain space and access functions that will only affect their own account.

Since this can limit their software installation options and eliminate shell access, you will stay in full control over your server at all times.  This makes security across the server much easier to maintain, as well as ensuring that each webmaster is not affected by another webmaster’s changes.

With cPanel reseller hosting, you not only get to promote a well-known and trusted name, but also get all of the advantages that cPanel has to offer.  This list is only 4 of the many advantages that cPanel reseller hosting has to offer.

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Cheap Reseller Hosting

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It seems like becoming a hosting reseller is one of the most popular ways that people try to earn a full-time income online.

However, the biggest mistake that most people make is that they look for a cheap reseller hosting package and start reselling.  Then after a few months, they realize one of two things.

First, they simply cannot create a competitive advantage based on price (which should be obvious because they are the middle man).

The second thing that they realize is that while they might come close to competing based on price (with sliver thin profit margins), their parent company simply isn’t a good hosting company.  They offer poor customer service or have a lot of down time or just slow load times.

When you choose a cheap reseller hosting plan, you are likely to get what you paid for.  Unfortunately, you didn’t pay much, and you aren’t getting much in return.

While a cheap reseller hosting package may seem like a great idea, it is important to look beyond the price.  Here are some common problems that you may encounter when searching for your next cheap reseller hosting package.

1.    Overloaded Servers

Servers have a limited number of resources that are available at any given time.  One way that some hosting companies profit from creating reseller accounts is by overloading servers.

When this happens, websites load slowly (if at all) or the server could just crash.  Either way, this is not a recipe that will make your customers happy.

2.    Get Your Customers Stolen

While this shouldn’t happen, it is an inevitability.  When one of your customers contacts the parent hosting companies support staff, they may ask about a different hosting option.

Before you know what happened, your parent company just stole your client.  Is this a common problem? Not really, but it happens, and it is much more likely to happen if you choose your reseller hosting package based solely on price.

3.    No Stability

Just because a company offers a cheap reseller hosting package, it doesn’t mean that they will be around forever.

It is always a better idea to go with a proven parent hosting company that has been around for at least a few years and has a track record of successful resellers.  This shows that they are a stable company and also hints that they take care of their resellers and help them grow.

If you choose a new hosting company and they flounder, for one reason or another, then you have just lost all of your customers.

While choosing a low-cost reseller hosting package is ideal, you shouldn’t necessarily jump at the cheapest reseller hosting package on the market.

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Apollo Hosting – Consumer complaints and comments, facts, and company profile

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Summary

Apollo Hosting hosts over 165,000 domains since 1999. They provide reliable and affordable website hosting services for business, ecommerce, reseller and personal use with all the tools you need for a successful website.

Website: Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Quick Facts

  • Number of domains hosted: 165,000
  • Services: Business hosting (starting at $6.96/month), Personal hosting (starting at $6.96/month), Windows hosting (starting at $13.96/month), and Dedicated hosting (starting at $99.95/month)
  • Location: Austin, Texas (USA)
  • Guarantees: 30-day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, price freeze guarantee (for dedicated server hosting)
  • Contact information: Call 1-877-525-HOST (4678), or visit their contact page.

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Products & Services

Business Hosting: Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, Shared web hosting – Linux, Shared web hosting – Windows, Dedicated hosting – Linux, Dedicated hosting – Windows, Reseller hosting

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Hostorian’s Review

Performance

Several customers of Apollo Hosting have posted their reviews of their service. Most of them have reported negatively about their performance, uptime, etc. People report that their servers are frequently down, and at least one person has reported their site being down for a whole day. Another person reported their site being down at least once every week.

I wonder how many people take advantage of their 99.99% uptime guarantee, and if they don’t, why not.

Site speeds are also reported to be on the slow side. All in all Apollo Hosting does not score high on performance.

Features

Apollo Hosting offers a wide variety of features to cater to every need, budget and technical requirement. If you want any additional features not included in one of their core packages, you can always pay a bit extra to get them. This lets you totally customize the feature set if you want.

However, other web hosting companies offer more disk storage, more bandwidth/data transfer, and more domains on a single account.

Support and Customer Care

Their technical support is based out of their headquarters in Austin, Texas, and is completely in-house. This means no more struggling with foreign accents or trying to get your point across to someone with English as a second language.

In addition to this, Apollo Hosting provides a lot of options to help you with your support issues. There is a pre-sales FAQ, a collection of quick start guides, knowledgebase articles, video tutorials, online manuals, forums, help desk, live chat, and phone support to assist you in every way they can.

Their contact number and a live chat button are available from every page on their site, making it easy to get in touch with them, should you have any issues.

All that said, it is really difficult to get a meaningful response from them, especially if you run into a challenging technical problem. The live chat support personnel will usually ask you to get a support ticket, which makes you wonder why they are there in the first place.

The fact that their telephone support is not outsourced is both an advantage and disadvantage in that though you are spared the trauma of struggling through foreign accents of non-native speakers, they can only afford to employ a limited number of support people, causing long wait periods for telephone support.

On the bright side, their manuals, tutorials, and articles are really good, and if you are not afraid of getting your hands dirty managing your sites yourself, Apollo Hosting can be a very good choice for you.

Cons

  1. A lot of features are offered at an extra price, and are not included in the package price. These prices are all clearly mentioned though, both on the package details page and the plan comparisons pages, so you will have a clear idea of what you would be paying before you purchase their services. Also, extra cost usually means they will spend additional resources to make sure everything runs smoothly, which is ultimately more important for a business than a few dollars per month. In addition, this pricing scheme means that those who don’t need the extra feature can pay less.
  2. Their prices are slightly higher than other hosting companies. But this also means better hardware, better network and server performance, and better support, so it’s all worth it, if you think about it.
  3. Customer support is not as good as some of the other hosting firms.

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Actual Customer Feedback

The Live Chat Tech Support is awesome and the low cost and great service is why I have been their customer for over 2 years. Apollo’s web hosting needs little web knowledge for upkeep. If I can maintain a website, anyone can! Thanks Apollo! – Dawna Avery, visualtestaments.com

I eventually tried 3 other providers before stumbling on Apollo. Email is extremely important in my business as our employees are all over the world and being up and running all the time is critical. I can not say enough good things about Apollo. They are always on call and always ready to help. Their network is one of the best. What they are doing is right on track. With a very in depth understanding of the industry and what is critical, I can truthfully say, they are doing a fantastic job. Customer service is one of the most critical areas for a company, and they know what they are doing. My business’ success depends on the website and email, and I feel that I am in good hands with Apollo. – Chris Atkins, linguasmex.com

I had previously been jumping from one hosting company to another, in search of the perfect host. I have now had my two websites with Apollohosting for about 2 years, and I am perfectly happy with their services – the main reason for choosing Apollohosting was that they have [a premium email filter] which blocks 99.9% of all spam and virus suspect emails on their server, and I don’t have to deal with them. Considering that I get around 700 spam messages per email address a day, this is a big load off my back, and my computer! But I also must say that the fact that I have not noticed any downtime of my websites at all, and they run smoothly, is also very valuable. When initially setting up my accounts, the help staff were always very helpful and kind, and since then I have not had to contact them once. I am here to stay! – Mimi Sidwell, jxranch.com

I am a long time Apollo Customer, Apollo Reseller, web developer and entrepreneur.

Apollo Hosting is there when you need them, late night, early morning, holidays, whenever. Apollo is there and that is nice and that’s why I’m still using them after 6 years. – Jeff Miller, closingvideos.com

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Verdict of This Review

Apollo Hosting does seem to be offering a wide array of services to cater to every need and budget, but it would have been better if they could focus on improving their pricing model, customer support, and performance of their servers in terms of speed and reliability.

Not recommended, unless maybe you are in Austin, Texas, and are looking for a local hosting provider.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

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