10 Signs of a Good Hosting Reseller Partner

Once you’ve put a game plan together for your reseller hosting business, it’s time to start looking for a partner. At this point, you’re already way ahead of the people who say they want to do something but don’t. However, your job is nowhere near done yet.

The most important part of running a reseller hosting business is choosing the right partner. Who you choose will have a significant impact on everything you do, from website speeds to the potential security risks that you put users under. However, before you make your decision, it’s vital that you know what to look for in the first place.

To help you make the best possible decision, we’ll reveal the top things you should look out for in a hosting reseller partner today. You’ll cover practically all of the key areas if you take each of these points in mind, so make sure you read through all of them.

There is always the risk of something potentially going wrong with a website, and for this reason, knowing how to recover everything if the worst happens is a good idea. Backing up all of your clients’ websites is non-negotiable, and you should ensure that you have the best possible tools to achieve this.

Let’s face it, though – nobody likes to spend time manually backing up their website. It’s also very possible that you could forget one day, which would result in putting your clients under unnecessary risk. To avoid this from becoming an issue, the best choice is to partner with a provider that has automated backups.

Also important is looking for a partner that offers this service for free. You should still consider paying for premium services, but having the free version will at least provide a solid baseline.

Completing a website security checklist is always a good idea, but you need to go deeper than that. Even if you set up everything to the letter, your clients are still under the threat of cyberattacks every day. According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average data breach cost $4.88 million worldwide that year – and as a result, preventing such issues from arising is of the utmost priority.

With this in mind, top-level security is one of the first things you should look for in your hosting reseller partner. Free SSL certificates should be a given, but high-level firewalls are also something to look for. On top of this, you should ensure that you have access to malware protection.

In addition to finding a reseller hosting partner with elite security features, it’s also important that you promote a culture of cybersecurity. You can do this by implementing various measures, such as a zero-trust policy and multi-factor authentication.

As you learn how to resell hosting and get more clients, you may find that the people and companies you serve have different needs. This will also naturally occur when some of your clients scale faster than others and require different things. It’s vital that you prepare for these in advance by ensuring that you can continue catering to them.

One of the ways that clients might need more assistance from you is through having private servers. Shared ones are ideal if a website is just starting out, but as it grows, it’ll inevitably require more resources. For this reason, it’s absolutely essential that you can offer private servers when requested.

Having this option to begin with will depend entirely on the hosting reseller partner that you choose. Managed cloud servers will take most of the manual work away from you, and it’s also important that you look for the different available virtual private servers (VPS’s) available.

If you choose a partner without these qualities, you’ll need to make it very clear to your clients. However, they’ll probably outgrow you at some point without dedicated servers. Understanding the difference between cloud hosting and VPS’s is also vital.

Every website, regardless of how big or small it is, will inevitably go through periods of higher and lower traffic. Because of this, it’s important that you can scale resources appropriately – especially when clients have to share servers with others.

Look for a reseller hosting partner that offers automatic scaling, depending on each client’s needs. You should also make sure you know what your usage costs are; in an ideal world, you’ll pick one with fixed pricing.

When scaling resources, it’s vital that you avoid causing your server to run more slowly. Doing so can result in performance issues that will inevitably harm your reputation.

When you think about partnering with a hosting provider, it’s very easy to think that custom branding doesn’t really matter. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Looking professional is paramount for building trust, especially in a field where sensitive information needs to be handled.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to choose a provider that lets you add your own branding. You’ll want the option to add your logo, name, colors, and so on.

Picking your own branding is a subtle marketing ploy that does more than just make you look professional. When others consistently interact with your brand, your name and logo will inevitably be more memorable to them. Branding in web design and on your servers is equally as important; make sure that you treat them as such.

Reducing as much friction as possible is crucial for providing excellent service to customers. And from personal experience, I can tell you that one of the most annoying things is switching to a provider where migrating your domain and website content is difficult.

Sometimes, clients will want to transfer their assets from somewhere else. As a result, you need to make this as easy for them as possible. Partnering with a reseller hosting partner that can do this work for you, and that is experienced in doing so, is one way to simplify the experience for everyone.

However, you also want to ensure that you help customers who are only just signing up for a new domain. For this reason, the provider you pick also has to make it easy for users to register a new domain. Where users buy their domain names is very important, and this starts with you choosing the right service.

Regardless of how experienced you are in web hosting and IT, not everything will run smoothly all the time. For this reason, you need to ensure that you have the right customer support handy. Customer support teams are one of the most important hires to consider for reseller hosting, but you should also have access to a team that knows what they’re doing on the hosting side of things.

Picking high-quality support is one thing, but you also need to consider their availability. Ideally, you’ll choose a provider offering round-the-clock support. This way, you and your customers will never be left in the dark.

Your clients will have varying website needs, but in all cases, they’ll need to pick a content management system (CMS) to organize everything. The best-case scenario is that they can access their backend directly from you, and for this reason, considering CMS management when finding a reselling provider is of the utmost importance.

Since many websites run on WordPress, and it’s the most scalable CMS, you should pick hosting for WordPress if you only choose one option. It might also be a good idea to look at different computer operating systems. Make sure that you’re transparent with what you can and cannot offer customers in this respect.

One of the coolest things about running an online business is that you aren’t restricted by physical borders. However, while it’s nice to have customers from all over the world, you also need to manage them accordingly.

The closer a customer is to your servers, the better their websites will run. For this reason, you should partner with a reseller hosting partner that offers different servers across the world. These don’t have to be in every continent, but you should cover as many time zones as possible.

Website speed is partially the responsibility of a site owner. If they have file sizes that are too big and bloatware plugins, their site speed will significantly drop. But at the same time, a lot of it comes from the server their website is hosted on.

Site speed will depend on the partner you choose, so make sure that you pick wisely. Look for unmetered bandwidth, top-level cloud servers, and good SSD storage. Since website speed can influence what your clients’ customers think about them, the stakes are high to get this right.

Regardless of how good your marketing is, your reseller hosting business will not succeed in the long run without choosing the right partner. It’s vital that you look at multiple aspects, such as customer support, site speed, and backup automation.

It’s much better to spend more on a high-quality reseller hosting partner than try to save costs and pick something lower-quality. Doing so will impact your reputation, and it’s also important that you don’t so that your clients can run their businesses more successfully.