Reseller Hosting - Good or Bad ?

Let's talk about the difference between reseller web hosting and a regular providers. It's important to know the differences between someone who is reselling web hosting and an actual web host company because what's at stake is your small business, realty or church/Christian web site. In order to let you decide the pros and cons of using a cheap reseller web hosting account as your web hosting provider, we have listed some of the differences below:

A reseller of web hosting space does NOT own or manage the servers, links, networks and DNS that holds your precious web site. Huh? That's right. They simply purchase a chunk of space from the parent web hosting and sell it out as his own for a profit. Conversely, actual web hosting companies actually own the machines and manages them from start to finish. Bottom line here is that a reseller of web hosting is simply a middleman. Therefore, online small business and other who use them should contemplate this before buying:

1) A reseller may set their own prices on shared web hosting, virtual private servers and dedicated web hosting packages that may or may not be a lower price than the parent web host. 2) If your site crashes or the server goes down, they cannot help you, but has to go through to the actual web hosting provider to "fix" the issue. In this scenario you will have to trust that the company is actually communicating the problem accurately.

Although a reseller web host may provide you with what you are looking for, the question remains: Why not buy affordable web hosting directly from the source? On my sites I'd rather do that since I know I am dealing directly with the folks who can help my web site. How about you?

So let me ask you a question? Can you tell the difference between a webhosting company that resells and one that is the real McCoy? Here are some things you can do to check if your web host is the former:

1) Google "WhoIs" and check out the domain of the suspected reseller site. 2) One telltale sign is that the name servers do not match the listed domain name. Find this out by checking any domain registrar. 3) Google the company online and see what you find about web host reselling. By the way, a great way to find reliable web hosting is to search out online web hosting reviews 4) And here's a novel approach: Speak to the sales department directly about the reselling issue.

Overall, the decision on whether or not you want to use a reseller web hosting service comes down to looking at several factors like price, reliability and web hosting options like what kind of control panel features they offer.

David Butler, the author of this article, is a Christian businessman, and has several web hosting sites, Affordable Web Hosting 4U, HostGator Reviews and Bluehost Reviews.