What is Reseller Hosting?

Reseller Hosting is a term that few are truly familiar with, however it could potentially be a life changing concept if understood and put in place correctly.

Reseller Hosting is the idea of purchasing an allocated set of hosting services together with a specified allotted space on the server in order to then distribute and/or sell those services onto a set of end customers or users, with the Reseller making a handsome profit along the way.

The idea of reselling has been around for many years in different guises, from wholesalers, white labellers, distributors and franchisees, the list goes on and on. However over the past decade the availability to shift products and services on mass has become commonplace thanks to the growth of the internet and online businesses.

Even though it’s now much easier to reach out and sell to your target market using online marketing methods now days, the ability to have the necessary infrastructure in place to provide a comprehensive suite of products is still required, this is where Reseller Hosting comes in.

You may be, for example, a web designer who has little or no overheads, earning an average wage with enough profit to pay the bills and keep the business ticking over. You may however want to resell other services, such as hosting, to both expand your product offering and reach out to new customers as well as up-sell to your existing base and in turn earn additional revenue.

Reseller Hosting can offer this web designer a hosting platform that is already in place and is fully managed at a mere fraction of the cost of having to create his own one.

Not only will the web designer have the option to gain access to all of the features that the supplier can provide, but he can then sell these services on to his customers using his own brand. What this means is that the end customer would not be aware that they were on a hosted platform that the web designer was simply reselling.

There are many different models that can be put in place in the way of Reseller hosting, from box shifting the services which is more of an affiliate model, through to simply passing leads on in a form of a ‘hands-off’ referral approach simply taking a small percentage in the process.

The beauty of Reseller Hosting is that this model is very scalable and requires little if no maintenance costs or time on the part of the Reseller as the supplier takes the cost of this on. This frees the Reseller up to just concentrate on up-selling and expanding their base and increasing their revenue using the Reseller model as the catalyst.

Usually there is a fixed monthly fee or an agreed percentage of sales but either way the amount you can make using this model way outweighs the fee’s to put it in place.

All of these Reseller methods are useful to have in place and My Hosting Bubble can not only help, but can provide this facility.

If you need help understanding Resell Hosting or you would like get in touch with My Hosting Bubble then please visit our site: www.myhostingbubble.com.

Top 5 Considerations when Choosing a Web Hosting Provider.

You have just had a great looking new website designed and are now requiring somewhere to host it or you have an existing website that you are hosting with a company already, but you are not happy with the quality of service and are now looking for a new hosting provider.

So what should you be considering when choosing a company to host your site?

1. Purpose for Hosting

One of the key factors, often overlooked, is the actual purpose of the web hosting package you are about to purchase. This is usually primarily determined by your websites function. If you have a very simple website with no database, eCommerce or little reason to require a powerful server then the likelihood is that a shared hosting package would suffice.

A shared hosting platform can vary in size and speed but it is usually limited by the resources it shares with other websites who will also be using the platform.

If you have a slightly more complex website that requires either more bandwidth, disc space, resilience, security or functionality then either a VPS (Virtual Private Server) which shares only certain aspects of the platform is the logical next step up. It gives you a little bit more flexibility in terms of space and bandwidth however the price is vastly reduced from the top end servers as certain aspects of the resources are shared.

A dedicated server/hosting is a powerful server that is standalone. Usually offered either managed or un-managed. Managed, as it suggests, is where all of the fundamental aspects of the platform are maintained for you, where as an un-managed server provides you with the infrastructure and hardware but allows you to build and manage the software layers yourself.


2. Price & Value for Money

The price of the hosting package will ultimately depend on the type of hosting you choose and the components that the hosting package consists of. Shared hosting tends to be the cheapest of the options and usually starts around £5 per month, VPS starts at £20 per month and the top of the stack dedicated servers start around £100 per month.

‘Value for money’ suggests getting the most for your money, but with hosting sometimes it is worth delving into the specification of the hosting package in order to understand exactly what you do get for your money. Many hosting companies claim the world, but in actual fact many of the options are really added value, they are just de facto elements that all hosting packages contain in order to function.

3. Technical Specification

The Technical Specification of a Web Hosting package gets more important the more functions you require a server to perform. There are several main categories of technical specification that you should be concerned with, they are as follows:

Web Space - This is a key bit of information that lets you know how much disk or storage space you receive as part of the package.

Bandwidth - This is the amount of data that can be sent concurrently over a specific connection in a given amount of time. If you are planning on having a website that attracts a large volume of visitors, such as an online shop then this is a key factor to consider.

Domains & Emails - A pivotal part of any website is the domain name. It’s always worth checking to see if your hosting package provides any domain names for free, or how many domain names you can actually have with the package as some limit you to a ‘number of websites’. Another important factor that goes hand in hand with the domain are the email addresses, again it’s worth checking the limitations.

Databases - A key feature for anyone thinking about setting up a more complex website is whether you require a database. This allows you to store, manage and serve up website information for large or information rich sites such as online shops and large online e-brochures.

Operating System - There are only several main Operating Systems when it comes to web hosting and they are Linux and Windows.

Ecommerce - If you are planning on running your own online shop then ensuring that your host platform has sufficient facilities to do so will be essential.

3. Scalability & Future proofed

Before diving into purchasing a web hosting package it’s always good to know how scalable the platform is that you will be moving your website too. If you have grand plans for growing your business online then this will be imperative.

How easily will you be able to upgrade to the next package up, or will you in fact hit the ceiling with regards to what they can offer very quickly, therefore leaving no room for growth.

4. Additional Features

There should always be a selection of additional features, even if they aren’t offered for free or from the outset, take a look at what the provider offers in terms of exciting web tools, analytics, widgets , one click installs, forums, gallery add-ons and general extra ‘bits’. This will help when it comes to building out the functionality of your website without having to totally re-structure or re-develop your site from the ground up again!

We hope you have found some of this information useful, but would love to hear from you and your experiences with web hosting.. Have you had bad experiences? Or good ones! Please let us know.

If you would like to tick all of the boxes above then don’t hesitate to get in touch with My Hosting Bubble or visit our site: www.myhostingbubble.com.

Top 3 Content Management Systems on the Market.

 

Content Management Systems (CMS) have been around for a few years now and they are becoming more and more prevalent in the market place.

There are several ‘weights’ of content management some of these are almost becoming obsolete due to the sheer ease of installation and use of the big players like Wordpress. The ‘weights’ of CMS are as follows:

 

Light Weight ‘overlay’

There are many light weight content management systems available on the market and these act as an ‘overlay’ to the existing static site that is already in place. An example of one of these CMS companies would be Cushy CMS. After a very simple registration and verification process, Cushy CMS provides you with the necessary code required to place tags around the content you need to update. Then all you need to do is log-in to www.cushycms.com and edit the content. It really is as simple as that.

 

Full on Content Management System

A full on CMS would be something like Wordpress or Joomla. It is a site that is dedicated to providing you with a ground-up framework for you to build and manage your site in.

 

Bespoke CMS Development

If you have an in-house development team, you have an endless pot of money that you can spend on developers or you have a website requirement that is so specific that no other CMS could possibly cater for you, then this is most likely to be the preferred option. The idea of building your own CMS is usually enough to put people off, but if you do go for it building it right is one thing, ironing out all of the teething issues that other CMS systems on the market have already done is another, but the cost and time required to make sure the CMS is always up to date and has the latest technologies and has continued support is a different thing altogether.

 

Of all of the flavours of CMS mentioned above, we favour the middle option, the ‘Full Content Management System’. There are many of these on the market at the moment and that number is growing quickly, however our top 3 CMS systems on the market are as follows:

 

1) Wordpress

Wordpress is probably one of the most well-known Content Management Systems in the world. At one stage it was said that 25% of the websites online used Wordpress, however I believe this percentage is growing by the week!

 

Wordpress users can switch between a huge range of ‘themes’ which are pre-developed website templates with different look & feels, empowering users to change themes at the click on a button.

 

Wordpress uses what are called plugins which are pre-defined widgets that extend a websites features and functionality and with over 38,000 of them, you’re sure to find that bit of web functionality you require.

 

All templates come already coded for mobile devices so are responsive to an extent and there is a raft of features allowing you to improve your website rankings in search engines. All in all this is a great place to start if you are new to CMS.

 

2) Joomla!

Joomla has been around for a while too, release one was in 2005 and they have gone from strength to strength since. Joomla has been downloaded over 50 million times to date and counting.

 

Joomla is a free and open-source content management system for publishing website content. It works slightly differently to Wordpress in that you need to install Joomla on your PC before you can use it.

 

Joomla can also provide many different styles of site via the use of what they term ‘extensions’. These extensions come in several different categories: components, modules, plugins, templates, and languages. Each of these handles a specific function within the Joomla system.

 

3) Drupal

Like Joomla! You will also need to install Drupal as this allows you to have the CMS framework ready to build your site. Drupal uses what it calls ‘modules’ to extend your websites functionality and capabilities. With almost 100,000 users Drupal is also a force to be reckoned with in the CMS arena.

 

If you would like to discuss your CMS hosting requirements please get in touch with My Hosting Bubble or our site: www.myhostingbubble.com.