Lets see what you have to consider before you plan to set up a website. You will either go for buying a web server along with its support equipments and a qualified technician to run it properly or you will pay a monthly fee to a company that runs websites to hold your website on their equipment. A big company who wants to go online can afford to spend this kind of amount but for others, it is better to go for the second option. You don’t need to spend buckets full of money on setting up the required web server infrastructure. So all you need to do is rent a server space from one of the web server companies. If you think it is as simple as it sounds, read ahead. When you start looking for web hosting services, the number of options available will surprise you. The very first thing that you have to decide is to choose between the shared and the reseller web hosting. Do you know the difference?
The main difference between the two is their scale. A shared web hosting requires you to pay for server space for only website with one domain name. If you want to set up more than one website, you will have to pay additional fee for each website. A reseller web hosting requires you to pay for a server space that can be used for more than one website. You can divide the space to host all your websites and if some space is left, you can even sell it to someone else and become a web-hosting subcontractor. Both options have plus and minus points. Lets discuss them to help you decide which one you should choose.
The main advantages of shared web hosting is that it is simple, cheap, and efficient on a small scale. For a personal or small business website, this is all you will need. You get one website and one domain name, often with the option to set up sub-domains for the different parts of your website. First, you are not only renting space on their web server equipment, you were renting their support. It is the responsibility of your web hosting provider to keep your website constantly accessible and running smoothly, and provide you with any technical support you might need-making this one less issue, you have to worry about when running your own business. Second, shared web hosting is five to twenty times cheaper than reseller web hosting, with prices ranging as low as $5 per month, or even free.
There are drawbacks to free web hosting sites, however. The main one is reliability. As you are not a paying customer, if the site goes down, all you can do is wait. You have no contract guaranteeing you a set response time for internet outages. Free web hosting is great for a personal website, but if you’re running a small business where your website needs to be available 24/7/365 and you need quick, reliable support for any and technical problems, then you’ll definitely want to go with a paid shared web host. The costs vary depending on how big your web site is, and how much web traffic you anticipate. The web hosting company Hostgator, for example, offers three shared web hosting packages varying between $4.95 and $12.95 a month. Finally, if you want to set up another website, you have to buy another shared web hosting plan, and your monthly expenses have just doubled.
The main advantages of reseller web hosting is flexibility and economies of scale. If you are running a fast-growing company, or are an entrepreneur running multiple businesses, then the cost of multiple shared web hosting every month can quickly add up. With reseller web hosting, you can set up as many websites as you need, and reallocate resources among them as they grow over time. Of course, you can rent out or resell and left over space to other individuals or small businesses to run their websites. If you juggle the finances well, reseller web hosting can be much cheap on a large scale than shared web hosting.
The main disadvantage of reseller web hosting is its cost. You can get the HostgatorHostgator shared web hosting package at the cost of $5 to $13 per month but the reseller web hosting package will cost you $25 to $100 for each month depending on your website’s size and traffic. You can reduce this expenditure if you sell the unused space to someone else but then there is no surety that you fill find someone to but it. You may not find a customer when you want one. It is possible that in some months you will have to pay for all the space even when you don’t use all of it.
The second problem is that, as a web hosting subcontractor, you are now responsible for maintaining support to all the people you resold web hosting space to-except that you actually have very little power over such technical problems. Although you often have some limited administrative functionality, all you can do for serious technical problems like an internet outage is pass the information on to your web hosting provider. Once your customers realize you are essentially just a near-powerless middleman, they may lose confidence in you and switch to a different web hosting provider. It doesn’t take much to ruin your brand name, and once that happens, your monthly reseller web hosting costs will rise and you lose customers to offset those monthly costs.
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