wesh.uk

There is no answer to that question. It all depends on where you are, the type of website, where your visitors are, the local infrastructure, the server and a zillion other things.
And of course, your budget. If you want the absolute best and fastest you could end up paying hundreds of dollars per month.

It's looks like your're blatently overselling there which is not a good sign.

Hi James
Sadly thats incredibly shady behaviour and goes to show that their shared servers are either very low quality or oversold to hell and back, or both.
You shouldnt have to "Upgrade" just to run a normal site, regardless of how many sites you are running.
Are the sites using cPanel? Migration should be very straight forward and fairly quick if it is...
This is something we avoid at all costs because it only ever leads to problems, comaplints and let-downs.
I guess a lot depends on your budget too, in getting what you pay for.. Happy to help if you need any assistance or advice on what to ask or look for?

Hi James
Sadly thats incredibly shady behaviour and goes to show that their shared servers are either very low quality or oversold to hell and back, or both.
You shouldnt have to "Upgrade" just to run a normal site, regardless of how many sites you are running.
Are the sites using cPanel? Migration should be very straight forward and fairly quick if it is...
This is something we avoid at all costs because it only ever leads to problems, comaplints and let-downs.
I guess a lot depends on your budget too, in getting what you pay for.. Happy to help if you need any assistance or advice on what to ask or look for?

I wouldn't worry about it, this is common with ever host who sells what doesnt exist and labels it as something its not "unlimited resources". What should bother you however is that their T&C's do not make any mention of actual limits. They have advised you not to upload videos because of server loads, yet make zero mention of server limits on their T&C's or usage policies etc.
I'd go back and ask them "So what server load is considered too much?" See if they cough up the answer or try to dodge it with "Well, its all about fair usage, there are no limits as such" (Hate those crappy answers that dodge the question.
Read over their T&C's, the wording is very odd indeed. The shared hosting "schedule" has more about domain names and bills than anything else.
Would you sign-up for a credit card from "Unlimited credit inc" if they offered you unlimited credit or would you really read carefully for the catch? This is your catch.. Unlimited space and traffic, because CPU and memory are so limited, you could never do much with it beyond a typical website anyway before they push you towards more expensive upgrades.
Not them in particular, its how every "unlimited" host operates, its a numbers game.. Draw you in with the overselling, then get you to upgrade because people dont know how easy it is to switch..

Hi Stooly
Video doesn't actually create barely any server load at all, the reason your host is trying to put you off is simply due to the amount of potential monthly bandwidth usage you will then create on the falsely advertised "unlimited" hosting plan. (No such thing as unlimited)
Sadly its exceptionally common to sell "unlimited everything" then give you an endless list of the things you cannot or should not do.
Why dont you upload the videos to Facebook, then you can then specify who can access them. No need to worry about software, hosting bills or even space, and they will then be instantly interactive for comments and ratings...
Alternatively, with YouTube, dont use "unlisted" just use "Private" so that you can share the links via email or txt?

Thanks Browserbugs, very kind of you to share that and did make several of us chuckle 🙂

Have to say @wesh.uk I totally agree, in fact took out a Wesh slice to test and f*ck me it's quick! SSL, HTTP/2, Keep Alive and GZIP straight out the box, makes stuff bloomin quick. Some highlights of tests I've been running;

Side note the 98 Performance is because of a Lighthouse bug not confirming the gzip header on the root document, testing with https://www.giftofspeed.com/gzip-test/ show's it's working.

Indeed, absolutely zero need for a VPS or "Managed hosting", you just need decent quality shared and should easily be able to score highly and have a well performing website.
We have done this for loads of folks now, having moved their sites, then worked with them to get their sites performing correctly.
Good quality shared hosting is sadly rare as many just want to resell the crap out of big corporates overloaded networks or are the big corporates themselves, overselling the life out of everything.
We'd love to help you out Marveniffi, would probably save you a decent amount of money too..

Makes little difference.
The speed is more affected by your configuration, theme and all plugins you bolt into your site.
There is no reason why a properly configure Wordpress site shouldn’t perform well on shared hosting.

VPS is the answer, you will have more control and the ability to grow into the hosting environment.  There are boutique hosts who can sell you a slice of a dedicated that usually offer great support as well.
Once you move away from shared, you’ll never go back. 
 

Or, just pay for decent shared hosting and configure the site properly.
I’ve got sites on shared hosting and there is no problem with load speed.

Indeed, absolutely zero need for a VPS or "Managed hosting", you just need decent quality shared and should easily be able to score highly and have a well performing website.
We have done this for loads of folks now, having moved their sites, then worked with them to get their sites performing correctly.
Good quality shared hosting is sadly rare as many just want to resell the crap out of big corporates overloaded networks or are the big corporates themselves, overselling the life out of everything.
We'd love to help you out Marveniffi, would probably save you a decent amount of money too..

Oh god, you said it... Not you too... Why??????????????
Why do people use a phrase that is longer, and less to the point than what's actually correct to start with?
"Contact them" is actually less letters, easier to type, and doesn't imply the use of lifeguard skills...
Sorry Matt, its a big laughing point here in the UK, but also very annoying...

I have to agree with this. We've moved all of our Shared Hosting over to highly optimized servers now including CloudLinux with FScage, PHP7, MariaDB, SSD Raid Drives, NGINX reverse proxy in front of Apache and you know what? It's pretty stunning the page load and performance you can get out of a good shared hosting account that isn't oversold. 
We do monitor our clients DB usage and proactively reach out to them to help them optimize when we can see things might be getting a little out of control, but other than that, there is just no comparison in what some of our clients are now experiencing on sub $10 plans compared to a few years ago, or even today under some of the less respectable hosts.

1. What are the most common issues that I might run into as a reseller? At the moment, I will likely only have approx 10 sites with low to medium traffic.
Customer support can be time consuming, even with a few clients. If something happens the onus is on you to solve problems when they arise, and if your host is sub par you could find yourself spending a lot of time on things.
Another one is email, if your clients use IMAP accounts you will get some storing a lot of emails and that can soon fill up your disk quota. With email generally you can get a lot of instances where clients contact you because "their email stopped working", often that's because of things outside your control like them losing their passwords, misconfiguring email apps, or connectivity.
2. Should I just do it? Did other people just dive in when they weren't sure? It seems quite expensive so I'm wondering about becoming an affiliate first for a while.
After 15 years of hosting clients sites I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the hassle. Nowadays I recommended hosts to clients instead via an affiliate link or two so I get a small payment if they choose one. It's a lot less to wroory about.
3. I move a lot between the UK and Australia and built small business Wordpress websites in both countries. Does that mean I shouldn't choose a .au or .uk provider and go for a global option?
Choose a host that matches what's best for your clients, e.g. if they have a mainly UK audience choose a UK host. Your own location is irrelevant.
4. In 2018, what are the best reseller options out there? I've looked at quite a few now but would love a recommendation.
As other have echoed it's easy to be biased as everyone has their own preferred hosts. What I would say is:
- don't go cheap, you get what you pay for
- avoid hosts that offer everything as "unlimited", usually there have strict rules buried in their T&C's which you can easily fall foul of.
- avoid the ones that advertise on TV, they seem to spend more money on advertising than their infrastructure
- be wary of hosting best of/review sites, these tend to be biased towards the ones that pay the best affiliate payouts
- do your research, if you want a UK host look closely because they may be based in the US or some out of the way country

Hi wesh.uk and BrowserBug,
Thank you so much for taking the time to give such thorough responses to my questions. I clearly still have a lot to learn and this was the final information I needed to decide that I will start off with an affiliate option for the next year or so. 
wesh.uk,  I will take a look at your hosting plans. Many thanks again!

Nail on the head really. It's a lot easier recommending, most hosts will offer some sort of thank you. Make sure whoever you recommend run fully managed, some hosts don't even backup as standard, they charge extra! The other point is make sure the host can talk with you as well as the client, or setup the account under an email alias the cc's you. The reason is I've had issues in the past where the client has zero technical understanding and yet is the only one who can liaise with the host. Last i'd say pick the right setup for each client, all to easy to go for an entry level shared hosting environment when VPS or better should be required.
Prime example i'm having DB connection issues with TSO Host, even wrote a cron (every 15 mins) to help them debug lol. This is a prime candidate to get off shared and on to vps

Hi Emily and welcome to WDF...
One question you might want to take some time to answer is, what exact is it that you want to do?
Are you a web designer, or do you want to become a middle-man, on call 24/7?
To answer your first question:
If you want to go into reselling, you essentially become 100% responsible for every aspect of a clients online business, from the simple things like creating and managing their hosting plan and billing them for it, ensuring you can turn a profit after paying for merchant accounts, billing software etc, right up to that call at 11pm at night to help somebody who has locked themselves out of a server or their email suddenly stops working and you have to troubleshoot it.
Typically, it will happen at the worst times too, like when on the loo or on holiday or very late at night, when X customer decided to sit down and setup their new phone/tablet and got the password wrong, and now none of their devices can access their emails.
That's just a few "tip of the iceberg" things that can and do regularly happen.
The other side to it too that resellers never seem to consider is, "What happens to my client if anything happens to me?"
As a reseller, the hosting company will not talk to them as you are the customer, so if you are in hospital or trying to take a break, you have to go somewhere that you have internet access at all times.. (Unless you like complaints and bad reviews)
If your knowledge of hosting and server side technologies is very limited, then you might want to simply find a fantastic hosting company that you yourself can depend on, and simply recommend them to your clients, taking a nice big commission for each.
That allows you to go anywhere, anytime, and if any of your clients have any hiccups, they speak directly to the hosting company and don't need to depend on you.
It makes a great selling point for you too, in that you can demonstrate great integrity in placing your clients somewhere safe instead of trying to be their "Jake of all trades, master of none" when you tell them "I'll help you get your website setup at X company who will take care of the web hosting for you, and you own the website and the hosting account", with the keyword their being that they OWN the website and the hosting.
Reseller hosting should really just be called "Multi-site hosting".
Question #2:
No, "Just doing it without knowing what you are doing is not wise. You would want to weigh up the pro's and cons first, take the time to learn about things like cPanel/WHM to name just one of a few, along with all the different hosting companies as there are loads, and some WILL put your reseller plan on some ropey underpowered server, or a slow as hell cloud setup sharing with tens of thousands of others (Quite a few of the big players do that).
There are other issues to consider too like where will your sites end up, geographically speaking, as some people complain a lot about "Why is 40% of my traffic from Germany" (Heard this one frequently) when their sites are with one of the big players who have their servers in Germany only.
You may want to consider, are you going to be able to take a call from an irate client who has locked themselves out of their email, or cant remember how to access their webmail, whilst your 12hr flight to Aus has just taken off?
Question #3:
This comes back to SEO. You should be hosting your clients websites as close to their audiences as possible. So if building sites for clients in both countries, who have their audience in their own countries, then you will want hosting in the UK and in AUS too, although AUS get their internet directly from Asianet and a few others, via a PLUTO and what would you do if on a long haul flight and one of them has an issue and cant reach you? They cant call the host if its all with your reseller plan.. Is it worth creating bad vibes with clients over something that generates so little revenue?
Question #4:
All your likely to get here is biased recommendations. For example, we're not a bargain basement hosting company, we're a premium hosting supplier to designers just like you, but, we DO support designers clients directly if the reseller is not available (Unlike any other host), but the sort of recommendation you maybe need is should you become a reseller or not...
Given what you have said about your travels, I would recommend that your ideal situation at the moment would be to find a fantastic host (Like us) and make the most of the affiliate scheme, otherwise you will have clients calling you at odd hours of the night from each country, and you really couldn't be a "hosting supplier" who doesn't have a phone number and is not reachable 7 days a week.
Was I biased enough?
We have a lot of designers who do this, they concentrate on doing awesome design work, then let us handle the hosting and tech support for their clients. Works exceptionally well.
We pay out 50% of a customers first annual payment too.
Your welcome to give us a call or drop us a PM to ask about anything.

Hi guys,
I've been reading so many conversations about becoming a hosting reseller or affiliate and yet I'm still having a hard time deciding what to do. I'm very new to the industry so I want to be sure that I have the skills to make it worth becoming a reseller at this stage.  At the moment, I help my clients out (as their designer) with minor hosting issues by getting in touch with the provider on their behalf and working through the issue. I can navigate my way around on a basic level, but want to have a clearer idea of what issues I might run into as a reseller. Questions:
1. What are the most common issues that I might run into as a reseller? At the moment, I will likely only have approx 10 sites with low to medium traffic.
2. Should I just do it? Did other people just dive in when they weren't sure? It seems quite expensive so I'm wondering about becoming an affiliate first for a while.
3. I move a lot between the UK and Australia and built small business Wordpress websites in both countries. Does that mean I shouldn't choose a .au or .uk provider and go for a global option?
4. In 2018, what are the best reseller options out there? I've looked at quite a few now but would love a recommendation.
 
Thanks so much for any help!
Emily

Indeed, even our free SSL certificates with every cPanel account auto-renew, so there is no downtime.

Hi Grant
The only SEO disadvantages you could find are:
Moving your website further away from your target audience, if your target audience is not global. Reduced server speed/page load times if new server is overloaded/oversold/slow. SEO Advantages?
Quicker servers = faster pages = Better rankings :-) Find a host with servers closer to your audience = better rankings :-) Find a host who can talk to you on the phone, any day of the week and knows what they are actually doing = Better sleep at night :-)
If the move is done correctly, the DNS update should take only 60 seconds, at most, and no holding page is required. Only name servers take several hours to propagate, but if the DNS records are managed correctly, you can migrate a site in seconds.
SSL Certificates are now free too, or at least with us they are free, and auto-renew, so unless you have any specific needs for a paid SSL certificate, you may not need it at all as the free one from cPanel are just as good.
Hope that helps... :-)

Hi Al
 
Depending on how you do it, yes and no. This is far best discussed with your actual hosting company, and their setup :-)

Interesting - A Small Orange were taken over by the infamous "EIG" group a while ago - see http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/hosting-updates-news/the-who-what-when-of-endurance-international-group-eig/ and https://www.reviewhell.com/blog/endurance-international-group-eig-hosting/
 
What EIG do is buy up web hosts and change a lot of things including infrastructure and support. Basically they seem to be reducing costs across the board so they can maximise profit for shareholders, sometimes to the detriment of quality of service it seems.

Good for you!