How to start a reseller hosting business

The instinct is to buy a VPS. Resist it. A reseller plan gives you WHM, your own branding and your own prices while we keep the server running — so you learn the business without learning system administration at the same time.

Plans start at Ksh 2,200 a month. Move to a server later, when the margin justifies the work. Plenty of profitable resellers never do.

1. Buy the plan sized for the first year, not the first month 2. Set up nameservers on your own domain — ns1.yourbrand, ns2.yourbrand. Ten minutes, and it is what white label actually means 3. Brand WHM and cPanel with your logo and support links 4. Define two or three packages. Not ten. You will not remember what anyone is on 5. Host your own site on it first. If it is not good enough for you it is not good enough to sell 6. Decide how people pay you before you have a customer waiting

• Billing software past about ten customers. Manual invoices stop working: renewals get missed and accounts stay active unpaid
• A control panel licence the day you move to your own server — frequently more than the server
• Your time on support, all of it unbilled
• Failed payments and churn, which you should budget for from the first month

This is why [shared licences](route:licenses-a-reseller-needs) matter more to a small host than a large one: at this end of the market, licensing is the difference between a business and a hobby.

Not advertising.

• Clients you already build sites for. You are probably managing their hosting unpaid already
• A niche. "Hosting for schools" beats "hosting" — and it is far easier to write about
• Your own content. Anyone searching "why is my site slow" is a customer eventually
• Referrals. Ask. Happy hosting customers refer if you remind them

Three rules on price: do not be the cheapest, price for support rather than disk, and sell yearly.