Reseller hosting is shared hosting with one extra level of control. A normal shared plan gives you one account with one set of limits. A reseller plan gives you a pool of resources and the right to cut it into separate accounts, each with its own login, limits and control panel, which you then sell or hand to clients. You never touch a server. This post covers how that works in practice, where the limits are, and who should buy something else.
The three levels
On DirectAdmin, which is what our platform runs, every server has three kinds of login:
| Level | Who | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | The provider | Runs the server, software, backups, IPs, reseller accounts |
| Reseller | You | Creates packages and user accounts inside a resource pool |
| User | Your customer | Manages their own domains, mail, databases and files |
Your customer logs in and sees a normal hosting panel. They cannot see your other customers, your pool, or the provider. You log in to the same panel and get an extra menu, Reseller Level, with the tools to create and manage them. A tour of the interface your customers get is in DirectAdmin for beginners.
What is in the pool
A reseller plan is defined by a handful of numbers. Ours, as an example (US dollars, VAT included):
| Plan | Monthly | Accounts | Storage | Traffic | Outgoing mail per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Partner Start | $15.99 | 10 | 15 GB SSD | 300 GB | 500 |
| Partner Grow | $26.99 | 25 | 30 GB SSD | 600 GB | 1,000 |
| Partner Pro | $44.99 | 50 | 60 GB SSD | 1,200 GB | 2,000 |
Three things to understand about those figures.
Accounts is the number of user logins you can create. It is the number that decides which plan you need, because it is the one you cannot stretch.
Storage and traffic are shared. Partner Grow does not give each of 25 customers 30 GB; it gives all 25 a combined 30 GB.
Mail per day is a pool as well. A thousand outgoing messages a day on Partner Grow is the total across every account you create, and you cannot set a package above that ceiling. That is plenty for ordinary business email and not enough for a customer who wants to send newsletters from their hosting account.
Packages and accounts
You do not hand out resources account by account. You define packages, which are named sets of limits, and assign one to each user.
In DirectAdmin: Reseller Level → Account Manager → Manage User Packages → Add Package. A package sets disk space, bandwidth, number of domains, subdomains, mailboxes and databases, plus switches for things like cron jobs and SSH. Then Add New User: username, email, domain, package. The account exists a few seconds later and the customer receives a welcome message with their login.
Tip: decide early whether your own website lives inside the reseller account. If it does, give it a package like any customer so a runaway log file on your site cannot eat the pool.
Overselling, in numbers
Overselling means the limits you hand out add up to more than the pool. It sounds dishonest and is how all shared hosting works, because customers do not use what they are allowed.
Take Partner Start: 15 GB of storage and 10 accounts. If you sell ten accounts with a 3 GB limit each, you have allocated 30 GB against a 15 GB pool, which is 2x oversold. A typical small business WordPress site with a few mailboxes uses well under 1 GB, so ten of them sit comfortably inside 15 GB.
| Allocated | Realistic use | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 accounts × 3 GB limit | 30 GB | |
| 8 small sites at about 0.7 GB | 5.6 GB | |
| 2 larger sites at about 2.5 GB | 5.0 GB | |
| Total against a 15 GB pool | 30 GB | 10.6 GB |
The arithmetic works until one customer fills their limit with backups or a mailbox nobody empties. The pool is real even if the per-account limits are generous, so check usage monthly under Reseller Level → List Users, which shows disk and bandwidth per user.
Tip: mail is what fills accounts, not websites. A customer with five IMAP mailboxes and ten years of attachments will use more disk than their site ever does. Ask about mail before you quote a package.
What stays with the provider
This is the part that makes reselling viable for one person. The provider is responsible for the operating system, the web server, PHP versions, security patches, the firewall, malware scanning, backups and the hardware. On our platform each account is also isolated with CloudLinux, so one customer's busy site is throttled inside its own limits and does not slow the others; how LVE limits work explains the mechanism.
What stays with you: your customers. You answer their questions, reset their passwords, tell them why their email bounced, and send the invoice. When something is wrong with the platform itself, you raise it with the provider and relay the answer.
How customers reach you, not the provider
A reseller plan worth buying is white label: the customer's domain uses nameservers on your brand, and the panel carries no provider name. You can check what any hosted domain exposes with two commands:
dig +short NS customerdomain.co.uk
dig +short A customerdomain.co.ukIf the first returns ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com, the customer sees your name. The second returns an IP address, and a reverse lookup on it shows the provider's hostname:
dig +short -x 203.0.113.10That is normal and the same on every reseller platform.
Tip: set the private nameservers before the first customer, not after the tenth. Moving live domains to new nameserver names means every customer logging in at their registrar.
Who it is for
- Web designers and agencies who already build sites and want the hosting revenue and the control that comes with it. One panel, one bill, every client site in the same place.
- IT consultants and freelancers who look after a handful of small businesses and are tired of holding logins to six different hosts.
- People starting a hosting brand who want to sell before they commit to running servers. The setup for that, with billing automation, is in starting a hosting business with WHMCS and DirectAdmin.
Who should buy something else
- You need root access, a custom daemon, a specific database version or anything not offered in the panel. That is a VPS; the differences are in shared vs VPS vs dedicated.
- One customer is much larger than the rest. A shop taking most of the pool belongs on its own plan or server, not next to nine brochure sites.
- You have outgrown the largest plan. Past 50 accounts the usual step is a second reseller plan or a server of your own with a panel on it.
- You want one site. Then a single shared hosting account costs less and does the same job.
A checklist before you buy
- How many accounts, and is the limit on accounts or on domains?
- Is storage a pool or per account, and is overselling allowed?
- Private nameservers included, and who provides the IPs?
- Are backups included, how long are they kept, and can a customer restore their own?
- What are the outgoing mail limits, and are they per account or shared?
- Is billing software included or extra? On our plans a WHMCS Starter licence is a $13.90 a month add-on, and included on Partner Pro when paid annually.
If the answers fit the number of customers you expect in the next twelve months, the plan is the right size.