Shared hosting is a plan for running your own website or two. Reseller hosting is a plan built for reselling hosting space to your own clients, under your own brand, with each client getting an isolated account. If you only need to host your own site, shared hosting is the right fit. If you're building a business around setting up and managing websites for other people, reseller hosting is worth a look.
What Is Shared Hosting?
With shared hosting, your website shares server resources (CPU, memory, disk space) with other customers' websites, but you only manage your own account. You log in to a single control panel, and everything in it (files, databases, email accounts) belongs to one website or a small handful of add-on domains under one owner.
What Is Reseller Hosting?
Reseller hosting gives you a bigger pool of server resources that you divide up and sell as individual hosting packages to your own clients. Each client gets their own separate control panel login, completely isolated from your other clients and from you. You set the plan limits, you set the price, and in most cases you handle first-line support for your clients yourself.
This is the model agencies, web designers, and IT consultants use when they want to host client websites without sending those clients to buy hosting directly.
Key Differences
- Who it's for: shared hosting is for one website owner; reseller hosting is for someone hosting websites on behalf of multiple separate clients.
- Account structure: shared hosting gives you one control panel account; reseller hosting gives you a master account you use to create and manage many individual client accounts.
- Branding: with reseller hosting, you can present hosting as your own service. Clients see their own control panel and, if you set it up, your business name rather than a hosting provider's.
- Support responsibility: on shared hosting, you contact your provider directly for help. On reseller hosting, you are typically your clients' first point of contact, and you escalate to the provider only when needed.
- Resource allocation: reseller plans come with a total resource pool that you divide between client accounts, so you need to plan capacity as you add clients.
Which One Should You Choose?
Choose shared hosting if you're running your own business website, blog, or online store and have no plans to host sites for other people.
Choose reseller hosting if you already build websites for clients and want to offer hosting as part of that service, rather than pointing each client to buy and manage their own hosting separately.
If you're not sure yet whether you'll take on hosting clients, start with shared hosting. Moving up to a reseller plan later is straightforward, and there's no need to pay for resource capacity you're not using yet.
Not sure which plan size fits your situation? See our web hosting plans for the available options.