TL;DR: Integrate maintenance with your website development services and sales of your website care plans will skyrocket!

“It might sound like an exaggeration but I went from a 0% success rate on closing care plans to a 100% success rate basically overnight … All I did was I simply stopped presenting this as optional … I just put it as a standard part of my process and pricing.”

Corey Dodd, Web designer

Are you ready to take your business and income to the next level?

Great! If you sell website maintenance services (or plan to), then read on to find out how making it a standard part of your business and sales approach will significantly boost your success rates and your income.

We’ll cover the following areas:

• Sell More Web Care Plans & Maintenance Services – The Guaranteed Method
• Make Maintenance Non-Negotiable and Improve Your Results
  • Step 1 – Convince Clients that Maintenance Matters
  • Step 2 – Inform Your Clients of the Risk of Neglecting Maintenance
  • Step 3 – Assume That Clients Will Be on Your Maintenance Plan
• How To Successfully Present Web Care Plans To Clients
  • Develop An Effective Sales Presentation Script
  • Build Website Maintenance Into Your Services
• Sell More Web Care Plans With Total Integration
  • DFY vs DIY WordPress Maintenance Options
  • Handling Client Objections

Sell More Web Care Plans & Maintenance Services – The Guaranteed Method

When you buy a car, you expect to keep it regularly serviced and maintained.

When you own a vehicle, you know that safety and maintenance are not optional.

Owning a digital vehicle is exactly the same.

As an experienced WordPress website developer, you know what can happen to poorly-maintained websites and the importance of keeping sites regularly serviced and maintained.

You know this, but your clients don’t.

Unless your potential clients have experienced their website being hacked or suffered disruptions to their business because of undetected problems, they really don’t know what can happen if they neglect website maintenance.

As an expert and a professional, then, it’s essential to communicate to your potential clients that website maintenance is not optional and explain why and what can (and probably will) happen to their business if they fail to maintain their websites regularly updated, secure, and optimized.

Make Maintenance Non-Negotiable and Improve Your Results

Imagine that every website you build for clients includes website maintenance.

Imagine too, that your clients simply agree and accept this as a necessary part of owning and running their website, much like they do when owning and running a vehicle.

This would significantly impact your bottom line, wouldn’t you agree?

Now, your mind is probably screaming all kinds of objections as you read this.

Let’s just put those on hold for the time being and explore how this approach would and could work for your business and increase your sales success rates.

Step 1 – Convince Clients that Maintenance Matters

The best way to convince someone else is to convince yourself first.

If you need convincing about the need to keep WordPress sites secure, just check out the latest WordPress security stats.

For example:

Sucuri reports that among the sites they have cleaned up:

• Most compromised environments were affected by malicious PHP scripts, .htaccess malware, and remote code execution backdoors.
• 50.58% of all CMS applications were outdated at the point of infection.
• The most commonly detected vulnerable components included out-of-date versions of Contact Form 7 (27.44%), Freemius Library (20.85%), and WooCommerce (14.51%).
• 69.63% of compromised websites were found to have at least one backdoor at the point of remediation.
• SEO spam was detected on 46.76% of all infected websites in 2022.
• 38.5% of all SEO spam infections contained spam doorways to manipulate search rankings. Another 29.3% belonged to unwanted SEO link injections for spammy websites.
• 23.63% of compromised websites contained at least one hack tool.
• Malicious WordPress admin users were found in 32.69% of infected databases.
• 90% of credit card skimmers were found in the form of malicious PHP code, making them impossible to detect with external scanners and highlighting the importance of server-level monitoring.
• The most common infection found during remediation was malicious allow/deny rules in .htaccess files associated with Japanese SEO spam (13.48%)
• 36% of all compromised websites had at least 1 vulnerable plugin or theme present in the environment at the point of remediation.
• Over 1.2 million backdoors removed from infected websites by Sucuri remediation teams in 2022 alone.

WPScan reports a yearly increase in WordPress vulnerabilities with over 51,000 detected plugin vulnerabilities in its database of 150,000+ plugins, and 95% of all vulnerabilities being attributed to plugins.

Additionally, hackers have even started running sophisticated phishing scams to impersonate the WordPress security team where emails are sent to WordPress users asking them to install plugins containing malware on their sites.

If all of the above statistics aren’t enough to convince you that every website you build for clients requires 24/7 protection around the clock, then search out more statistics until you are fully convinced. For example, you can read Patchstack’s State of WordPress Security in 2024 whitepaper.

Step 2 – Inform Clients of the Risk of Neglecting Maintenance

As a professional website developer, it’s vitally important that your clients be properly informed of the risk of neglecting maintenance of their websites, preferably before something happens.

Make it your responsibility to communicate to potential clients that:

• All websites are continually and relentlessly under attack. Keeping a site fully secured and protected is an ongoing battle.
• Attacks on websites can come from anywhere and everywhere at any time … bots, phishing emails, system vulnerabilities, etc.
• Hackers are using increasingly more sophisticated methods to detect vulnerabilities and look for ways to breach site security and cause havoc regardless of a site’s size or importance.
• Site owners who do not perform regular maintenance stand little to no chance against hackers and malicious bot attacks… it’s only a matter of time before they will run into serious problems.

Step 3 – Assume That Clients Will Be on Your Maintenance Plan

You don’t need to hard-sell or force clients to buy maintenance, and you don’t need to use any persuasive, manipulative, or dirty tactics.

Simply assume that every client will be on your maintenance plan…and thank you for it!

If you can conceive this in your mind, you won’t sell yourself short.

Remember, it’s no different than buying a vehicle. If you neglect to regularly service and maintain it, expect to incur more serious and expensive problems later.

So … how do you introduce website maintenance to potential clients without making it a “hard sell?”

First, read our guide for successful client briefings. It shows you how to conduct a thorough needs analysis of your client’s business and gather all the information you need to effectively assess and evaluate your client’s needs, wants, capabilities, and budget.

If your prospective client clearly lacks the capabilities to carry out their own website maintenance, just assume that you will provide them with this service.

How To Successfully Present Web Care Plans To Clients

If you don’t currently sell web services that include maintenance, then consider introducing this earlier in your sales approach.

Your closing rate for selling web care plans will increase significantly if you effectively communicate the following to your potential clients:

1. The necessity, importance, and value of your maintenance services,
2. How much time, effort, and know-how it would take for them to learn how to perform these services themselves,
3. How outsourcing these services to you will eliminate all the hassle and headaches, and save them time and money.

Let’s look at how to do this.

Develop An Effective Sales Approach

However you present solutions to potential clients (e.g. emails, video conferencing, face-to-face meetings, etc.) it’s important to introduce your maintenance services early on in your sales process, so that they are fully aware of it and see this as part of your solution.

Here’s the approach we suggest:

1. Briefly introduce website maintenance as an integral part of your services when communicating your solution.
2. Include analogies and metaphors to help clients understand the importance of website maintenance.
3. Have supporting materials to back up your claims.

Let’s go briefly over each of the above points.

1 – Introduce Website Maintenance at the Beginning of Your Communications

However you choose to present your website development services to potential clients is not the focus of this guide. What’s important is that you communicate to potential clients that website maintenance is not an add-on, but an integral part of your website development services.

For example, here is a script you can adapt and use to communicate this in a face-to-face meeting, video conference, or email:

Initial Script

“We have reviewed your information and put together an effective solution that we believe will best address your needs and your budget.

Before we discuss the proposal further, please understand that your website will become a 24/7 target for hackers and malicious attacks as soon as it goes live. Sophisticated crime syndicates around the world target all websites regardless of their size using automated bots.

Owning a website is like owning a car. If you don’t keep it regularly serviced and maintained, it will eventually break down and cause bigger and more expensive problems later.

Unfortunately, this is the reality of having an online presence. Here at [YOURCOMPANY], we take this seriously, so, along with our proposed solution for developing your website, we have included important information about what kinds of problems you can expect to deal with if you don’t keep your site regularly updated and secure. We have also included details of a website care plan that fits your overall budget.

As you will see from the proposal, we’ll not only build you a secure website in a secure hosting environment, we’ll then keep it secure, protected, and optimized for the first 12 months, to ensure that nothing disrupts your business. We will proactively update, monitor, and fix all issues on your site, and keep you informed of everything we do with comprehensive reports (see attached sample).”

As you can see, there is no hard selling going on. By including the above information with your proposed solution, you not only communicate to potential clients that you are a professional, but that you also care about the safety, security, and long-term success of their business.

This simple step can help you secure an additional recurring income for many years to come.

The above script states that you will include information about what kinds of problems your potential clients can expect to deal with if they don’t keep their site regularly maintained and secure, an overview of your website maintenance services, and a solution that will fit their budget, so let’s look at how to do this.

Website Maintenance Services Script

We recommend adapting a script like the example shown below to your proposal or presentation. It explains to your potential clients the importance, value, and necessity of performing regular website maintenance and why they should hire your services to make sure it will get done:

“As stated in our proposal, our website development services include looking after your site once your site is built. This section explains the necessity, importance, and value of performing regular website maintenance, and how we proactively ensure that your site remains up-to-date, secure, and fully optimized at all times.

“The necessity of maintenance: WordPress sites are frequent targets for hackers due to their popularity. Regular security reviews and updates are crucial to protect your site from vulnerabilities. Additionally, a well-maintained website loads faster and provides a better user experience, which is essential for retaining visitors and improving your search engine rankings.

“Why maintenance is important: Your website is a critical asset for your business and the primary gateway for your customers. Regular maintenance will ensure that your site remains secure, up-to-date, and performing at its best. This includes updating all of the software, managing security, and performing regular backups to safeguard your data.

“The value of using our professional maintenance services: You will have access to our expert website maintenance and troubleshooting knowledge and years of experience proactively monitoring and addressing any potential issues before they become major problems, saving you time and reducing downtime. We’ll keep your site running smoothly and problem-free 24/7, leaving you free to focus on your core business activities with peace of mind.

Here are the services we will perform on your site to keep it running at its best and the solution we propose to fit your budget: [INCLUDE LIST OF SERVICES]…”

2 – Include Analogies and Metaphors To Make Website Maintenance Easier To Understand

Including the following analogies and metaphors into your presentation or proposal will help potential clients understand the value and importance of signing onto your web care plans for a healthy, secure, and high-performing website:

“Maintaining a website is much like maintaining a car. Imagine if you never changed the oil or checked the brakes. Eventually, it would break down. Similarly, our regular updates and checks keep your website running smoothly and prevent costly breakdowns.”

“Think of our service as a top-tier home security system. It continuously monitors your website, safeguarding it from hackers and malware just as an alarm system protects your home.”

“Maintaining a website is like tending a garden. Without regular care and attention, it can become overgrown and unappealing. We ensure your website remains vibrant and healthy, much like a well-kept garden.”

“Our service is like a health check-up for your website. Regular assessments help us catch and fix potential issues before they become serious problems, just like visiting a doctor for routine health checks.”

“Consider our plan an insurance policy for your website. It offers peace of mind knowing that if anything goes wrong, you’re covered and your website will be promptly restored.”

“Just as a building needs a strong foundation to remain stable, your website requires regular maintenance to ensure its foundation remains solid and reliable.”

“Imagine never cleaning your house. Over time, dust and clutter would accumulate, making it unlivable. Similarly, without regular maintenance, your website can become slow and prone to serious issues.”

“Think of our plan as a personal fitness trainer for your website. We keep it in peak condition, ensuring it performs efficiently and remains in excellent health.”

3 – Have Supporting Materials To Back You Up

Generate a client report from The Hub and use it to present your maintenance services to potential clients.

Use the report with the sample scripts in your proposal, presentation, web copy, or any other method used to promote your services.

Website Security

Imagine your website as a storefront; you wouldn’t want to leave it unlocked at night, would you?

Our website security and software update service acts like a guard patrolling your premises 24/7, offering continuous protection against the relentless threat of automated bots and hackers. By consistently monitoring, updating, and interpreting security data, we ensure your site remains secure, up-to-date, and fully protected against potential disruptions.

The benefits of our website security services include:

• Constant Protection: Your WordPress site is under constant threat from multiple bots every hour, round the clock, 24/7/365. Our service ensures your site is protected at all times.
• Automated Defense: Bots relentlessly attempt to hack websites, regardless of size or importance. With our service, your site is defended against these automated attacks every minute of the day.
• Comprehensive Monitoring: Hackers explore every possible vulnerability. We consistently monitor your security, run scans, review logs, and update software components to stay ahead of threats.
• Proactive Updates: Just one outdated plugin with a known vulnerability can cause massive disruptions or damage to your site and business reputation. We ensure all your software, plugins, and themes are always up-to-date.
• 24/7 Security: Our service includes 24/7 monitoring to detect vulnerabilities, malware, and prevent hacking attempts, providing you peace of mind.
• Expert Installation and Configuration: We install and configure the best security solutions tailored to your site, ensuring optimal protection.
• Data Interpretation and Troubleshooting: Security data needs expert interpretation. Our team analyzes data and troubleshoots issues to prevent compromises, keeping your site secure.

Our proactive approach enhances your website’s security, protects sensitive data, and maintains customer trust.

Website Backups

Performing regular and consistent site backups is like having an insurance policy for your data. Backups ensure that your website’s information is safe and can be quickly restored in case of data loss or a cyberattack. This also minimizes downtime and prevents the loss of crucial information, keeping your business operations smooth and uninterrupted. Think of it as a safety net for your digital assets.

The benefits of our website backup service include:

• Daily (or Hourly) Backups: Ensure your website data is always safe with regular backups. You can choose daily or even hourly backups based on your needs.
• Pre-Maintenance Backups: We perform backups before any maintenance activities, such as updating plugins or fixing issues, to safeguard against unexpected problems.
• Instant Restoration: In case of any issues, our service allows for immediate restoration of your site, ensuring no data is lost and minimizing downtime.
• Peace of Mind: With our backup services, you can focus on your business without worrying about data loss or site disruptions.

We’ll ensure your website is always secure and your data is never lost.

Website Optimization Service

Optimizing your website improves loading times, enhances user experience, and boosts search engine rankings. A faster, more efficient site keeps visitors engaged and increases conversion rates, directly impacting your bottom line. Just as a clean and organized store attracts more customers, a well-optimized website ensures a great experience for your visitors.

The benefits of our website optimization services include:

• Enhanced User Experience: Fast loading pages improve user satisfaction and engagement, leading to lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.
• Improved SEO Rankings: Optimized site speed boosts your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find you online.
• Increased Traffic: Better search engine visibility and a superior user experience attract more visitors to your site.
• Regular Maintenance: As part of our service, we continuously optimize your site to keep it performing at its best, ensuring long-term benefits.
• Competitive Advantage: A well-optimized website gives you an edge over competitors with slower, less efficient sites.

Our website optimization service ensures fast loading pages, improved user experience, better search engine indexing, increased traffic, regular maintenance, and a competitive edge, driving your business to greater success.

Uptime Monitoring

Our website uptime monitoring services ensure your site is always online, handles issues instantly, and proactively maintains site availability 24/7.

The benefits of our website uptime monitoring services include:

• 24/7 Monitoring: Your site will always be up and running, even while you sleep, ensuring continuous availability.
• Instant Issue Alerts: We receive instant alerts if any problems arise and address them immediately, even if it’s at 3am.
• Proactive Problem Solving: Our proactive monitoring keeps your site error-free and consistently available online 24/7.

Tip: If you don’t want to fix your clients’ problems at 3 am, just use our expert services instead. We’ll handle it all for you (while you and your clients get a great night’s sleep!)

Fixing Broken Links

Having broken links on your site can seriously impact user experience, search rankings, and even your business reputation.

The benefits of our website link checking services include:

• Enhance User Experience: Fixing broken links ensures seamless navigation, making it easier for your visitors to find what they need. This keeps users engaged and reduces frustration.
• Improve SEO: Regularly checking and fixing broken links positively impacts your site’s SEO, helping to maintain and improve your search engine ranking.
• Boost Site Credibility: Broken links can harm your website’s credibility. By fixing them, you show that your site is actively monitored and maintained.
• Prevent User Drop-off: Imagine navigating a store where aisles are blocked; it’s frustrating and likely to drive customers away. Fixing broken links prevents this issue on your website, keeping visitors on your site longer.
• Proactive Maintenance: We will check and repair broken links on your site regularly, ensuring your site remains functional and user-friendly.

Additional Services

In addition to the above, include services like SEO, content writing, site performance reviews, etc.

End your maintenance services proposal or sales presentation with a statement that reinforces how the services will save your clients time and money.

For example:

Our comprehensive and proactive website maintenance services ensure your site remains secure, fast, and up-to-date all the time.

By letting us take care of your site, you can focus on growing your business with peace of mind. We’ll keep your website safe and running at its best to eliminate problems, reduce your costs, and provide an optimal online experience for your users and search engines.

Build Website Maintenance Into Your Services

The last step in this approach is to integrate website maintenance with your website building services.

There are a number of ways you can do this. For example, you can:

1. Include an initial period of website maintenance with your website development services.
2. Offer different care plans to suit different businesses and budgets.
3. Make subscribing to your web care plans cheaper as a preventative option.

Let’s briefly explore each of these options:

Include An Initial Period Of Website Maintenance With New Site Builds

Offer to include website maintenance for a period of time (e.g. 6 or 12 months) with every new website. This allows the client to fully experience the value of your service and to hopefully depend on it.

After the expiration period, you can present your client with different renewal options (e.g. auto-renew every 6, 12, 18 or 24 months).

The benefits of this approach include:

• Affordability: Adding 3 or 6 months of website maintenance to your total web development price could be enough for clients on a small budget to experience and renew the service after their initial period expires.
• Flexibility:  You can create different service periods with different pricing options (e.g. pay monthly or annually, buy 24 months of maintenance get 2 months free, etc.) and include this option for different plans (see below)

Offer Different Care Plans

Offer different care plans to accommodate different business types and needs.

As explained in our Website Care and Maintenance Guide, our reseller services lets you configure different web care packages and display these on your site with custom pricing tables.

Make Subscribing Cheaper As A Preventative Option

Think of this as business insurance for your clients.

Calculate your service and labor costs, and increase your pricing for clients who are not on your care plan(s).

Let your prospects know that if they are on your maintenance plan and something were to happen to their site:

1. Their subscription will cover everything listed in their package.
2. If any additional work is required, you will invoice them for services or labor not covered by the plan (tip: offer to charge the discounted rate for the additional work if they upgrade to the next level plan).

Sell More Web Care Plans With Total Integration

For this approach to be truly effective, make sure that all of your sales, marketing, and promotional communications are consistent:

• Publish articles on your blog to educate potential clients on why they should hire you to build and maintain their sites.
• Build an FAQ section on your site.
• Add testimonials from happy clients that have experienced the benefits of your integrated services.

DFY vs DIY WordPress Maintenance Options

Let’s suppose a client comes to you for website development. You pitch them on how you will build and maintain their sites, and they decide that they only want website development for now, citing budget constraints, etc.

Before offering web development and website maintenance as completely separate services, we’d like to suggest one more thing you can do to help your clients understand the value and necessity of using your website maintenance services, and give yourself another opportunity to increase sales of your web care plans:

Give them a guide that shows them how to perform all of the maintenance themselves.

What??? Why would you do this?

Here’s the strategy behind this method:

1. Build Trust: Your clients will see that you truly care about the long-term success of their business and that you stand by your belief in the importance of website maintenance.
2. DIY is Hard: Most businesses are too busy to perform a complete website maintenance routine themselves or to spend time learning how to do it. When your clients attempt to follow the instructions in your guide, they will realize that website maintenance is far more complex and time-consuming than they had imagined.
3. They Choose Your Solution: Clients will appreciate how much work, skills, and expertise is required to maintain their website (especially when they run into problems). This will help them value your services and appreciate your professionalism, care, and transparency.

Do the above, and when your clients are ready to commit to maintaining their sites, you will be their first and obvious choice.

So, if a client declines to take up your maintenance services, simply say something like:

That’s ok, I completely understand that you aren’t able to commit to our maintenance service right now because of [insert client’s reason here].

As we explained, it’s really important to keep your website updated, secure, and optimized, and we take this seriously. So, after we build your website, I’m going to give you a comprehensive guide with checklists and detailed step-by-step instructions that show you how to perform all of the maintenance steps yourself. This way, you can keep your site completely safe and secure, and if you need any help, just reach out and let us know.

You can create your own guide, search for resources on the web, or download this free and comprehensive WordPress site maintenance tutorial as a PDF.

After building and delivering the website, send them the guide and ask them how things are going when you have your next follow up meeting.

You will find that many clients will ask you to take over their site maintenance, especially after attempting to do it themselves, or experiencing difficulties.

Website Care Plans – Handling Client Objections

Having the conviction that website maintenance is not an option but a necessity of owning a website is not enough.

It’s also important to be prepared for any objections or concerns potential clients may have about using your maintenance services.

To help you do this, we’ve created a useful and practical guide on how to handle client objections and concerns using AI tools here: Can AI Help You Sell More WordPress Services? WPMU DEV AI Assistant vs ChatGPT

WPMU DEV Gives You Everything You Need to Succeed

If you are a WPMU DEV member, you already have everything you need to start profiting from selling WordPress maintenance services to clients, right from the starting gate.

We give you a complete web development and WordPress site maintenance “business in a box,” so you can sell more web care plans and maintenance services effectively to your clients, grow your business, and boost your recurring income.

In our Website Care and Maintenance Guide, we explain:

• What types of maintenance services you can offer to your clients.
• Why offering maintenance services can be a profitable source of monthly recurring revenue for your business.
• How to set up website care plans and maintenance service packages under your own brand with WPMU DEV.

We also provide a WordPress Maintenance Checklist so you have a starting template to work with and develop your services.

We even show you step-by-step how to resell our complete suite of web services and how to set up a white label client portal so your clients will only ever deal with you while we do all the heavy lifting in the background.

And that’s not even scratching the surface of all we offer.

We also:

• Develop, maintain, and include every plugin you need for optimal site maintenance (e.g. security, site optimization, image optimization, SEO, etc.),
• Provide you with essential maintenance services like automation, backups, analytics, and reporting,
• Include time-saving maintenance tools for 24/7 site monitoring and broken link checking,
• Provide free assisted migration services so your clients can switch over to your services with little to no disruptions, and
• Make everything accessible from one central command center that lets you manage and maintain unlimited client sites.

Additionally, with integrated hosting, firewalls, email, domains, dns management, client billing, and our “hands-free” done-for-you expert services for handling your client’s uptime monitoring, malware removal, site optimization (and whitelabel expert client support coming soon!), you could even say that we have built the “ultimate” all-in-one website care and maintenance platform.

We hope you have found this guide on how to better communicate the value and necessity of your maintenance services useful. Make your maintenance services non-optional and watch the sales of your web care plans skyrocket.

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Our Agency membership includes everything you need to grow your WordPress business and take it to the next level.

It’s no secret that more businesses are now turning to AI-powered tools like ChatGPT to assist with their sales and marketing. You’re probably using AI tools yourself to craft emails and product descriptions, generate headlines and article outlines, etc.

We’ve previously written about how we think AI will affect the WordPress industry and listed a number of incredible AI design tools for WordPress.

But…

What about using AI as a tool to help you sell more WordPress services?

Objections from potential clients contain a hidden treasure of opportunities to sell WordPress services. They offer valuable insights into the client’s perspective and needs.

If you are a WordPress agency, developer, or freelancer selling web services, learning to address objections effectively can transform a potential client’s hesitancy into trust and a long-term commitment to using your services.

So, we set out to test both ChatGPT and our own AI Search Assistant to see how each tool handles objections that potential clients may raise when you present them with your services.

In this article, we’ll show you our test results, and provide a guide to mastering handling client objections and concerns using AI tools.

By the time you are done reading this, you will have a new secret weapon to help you improve your sales conversions and gain more clients.

We’ll cover the following:

• WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant vs ChatGPT
  • Test #1: Email Migration
  • Test #2: Maintenance Costs
  • Test #3: Plugin Conflicts
  • Test #4: Malware Removal
  • Results
• AI Search Assistant = Your New Sales Assistant

Additionally, see our comprehensive guide on How to Sell More Website Care Plans and Maximize Your Recurring Revenue for our recommended strategy on presenting maintenance services to potential clients.

WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant vs ChatGPT

ChatGPT needs no introduction, so we’ll just state that we wanted to see how the tool would handle different kinds of objections and concerns potential clients may raise to your web services.

We also wanted to see how it compares to our own AI Search Assistant tool, which has been trained on our comprehensive documentation section and blog articles related to our products.

These are the simple prompts we used to test both tools:

• “We provide WordPress services. A client has provided the following objection: “I’m worried about migrating my existing emails to your service.” How should we address the client’s objection?”
• “We provide WordPress website maintenance services. A client has provided the following objection: “We don’t have the budget right now.” How should we address the client’s objection?”
• “A client has provided the following objection: “I’m worried installing new plugins on my site might cause conflicts or issues.” How should we address the client’s objection?”
• “A client has provided the following objection: “I’ve tried malware removal services before, and they didn’t help much.” How should we address the client’s objection?”

And here are the results we obtained for each of the above prompts, presented word-for-word as given by each tool…

Test #1: Email Migration

“We provide WordPress services. A client has provided the following objection: “I’m worried about migrating my existing emails to your service.” How should we address the client’s objection?”

WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant

To address your client’s concern about migrating their existing emails to WPMU DEV’s Webmail service, you can reassure them by highlighting the following points:

Ease of Migration: Explain that WPMU DEV’s Webmail service is designed to be user-friendly and supports IMAP, which allows for easy synchronization and migration of emails from their current email provider.

Support and Resources: Let them know that WPMU DEV provides comprehensive support and resources to assist with the migration process. This includes detailed guides and access to a support team that can help troubleshoot any issues that may arise during the migration.

Security and Reliability: Emphasize the robust security features of WPMU DEV’s Webmail, including SSL encryption, spam and virus protection, and secure storage. This ensures that their emails will be safely and securely migrated and stored.

Professional Management: Highlight that WPMU DEV’s Webmail service is professionally managed, which means they won’t have to worry about the technical complexities of running their own email server.

Client Testimonials: Share testimonials or case studies from other clients who have successfully migrated their emails to WPMU DEV’s Webmail service. This can provide reassurance and build confidence in the service.

Here’s a sample response you could use:

Dear [Client Name],

Thank you for expressing your concern about migrating your existing emails to our service. We understand that email migration can seem daunting, but we are here to make the process as smooth and seamless as possible for you.

Ease of Migration: Our Webmail service supports IMAP, which allows for straightforward synchronization and migration of your existing emails from your current provider.

Support and Resources: We offer comprehensive support and detailed guides to assist you throughout the migration process. Our support team is also available to help troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Security and Reliability: Your emails will be securely migrated and stored with our robust security features, including SSL encryption, spam and virus protection, and secure storage.

Professional Management: With our professionally managed Webmail service, you won’t have to worry about the technical complexities of running your own email server.

Client Testimonials: Many of our clients have successfully migrated their emails to our service and have been very satisfied with the results. We would be happy to share their experiences with you.

We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for you and are here to support you every step of the way. Please let us know if you have any further questions or if there is anything else we can do to assist you.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Position]
[Your Contact Information]

For more information on our Webmail service, you can visit this link.

If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact our support team.

This response addresses the client’s concerns while providing reassurance and highlighting the benefits of using WPMU DEV’s Webmail service.

ChatGPT

Test #2: Maintenance Costs

We provide WordPress website maintenance services. A client has provided the following objection: “We don’t have the budget right now.” How should we address the client’s objection?

WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant

Addressing a client’s budget objection effectively involves highlighting the value and potential cost savings of your services. Here’s a suggested response:

Thank you for sharing your concern about the budget. I completely understand that managing expenses is crucial for any business. However, investing in professional WordPress maintenance can actually save you money in the long run by preventing costly issues and ensuring your site runs smoothly.

Here are a few points to consider:

Proactive Monitoring: For just $9 per month per site, our Proactive Monitoring service ensures your site is always up and running. We monitor your site 24/7 and fix any issues immediately, preventing potential downtime that could affect your business.

Site Speed Optimization: A faster website not only improves user experience but also boosts your SEO rankings. Our one-time Site Speed Optimization service, priced at $399, can help achieve Google PageSpeed scores of 90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile, which can lead to increased traffic and conversions.

Malware Removal: Security breaches can be extremely costly and damaging to your reputation. Our Malware Removal service, available for a one-time fee of $250, ensures your site is clean and secure, protecting you from potential losses due to hacks or malware.

By investing in these services, you can avoid unexpected costs and focus on growing your business. Additionally, you can resell these services to your clients with a markup, creating an additional revenue stream for your business.

If you’d like to discuss this further or explore flexible payment options, please let me know. I’m here to help you find the best solution for your needs.

For more details on our services, you can visit our Expert Services page.

This approach emphasizes the long-term benefits and potential cost savings of professional maintenance services, making it easier for the client to see the value in investing now.

ChatGPT

Test #3: Plugin Conflicts

A client has provided the following objection: “I’m worried installing new plugins on my site might cause conflicts or issues.” How should we address the client’s objection?

WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant

It’s understandable to have concerns about installing new plugins on your site. Here are a few points to address this objection:

Quality Assurance: WPMU DEV plugins are thoroughly tested to ensure they work seamlessly with WordPress and other popular plugins. This minimizes the risk of conflicts.

Support: Our support team is available 24/7 to help resolve any issues that might arise. If you encounter any conflicts or problems, you can reach out to us for assistance.

Backup and Restore: Before installing new plugins, it’s always a good practice to back up your site. This way, if anything goes wrong, you can easily restore your site to its previous state.

Temporary Administrator Account: As part of our service, we may create a temporary administrator account to handle the installation and configuration of new plugins. This ensures that the process is managed by professionals who can quickly address any issues.

Optimization Report: After performing any optimization or installation, we provide a full report including pre and post-optimization results. This helps you understand the impact of the changes made.

Revert Options: Many of our plugins, like Defender, offer options to revert changes if needed. This allows you to undo any tweaks that might not work well with your site.

For more detailed information, you can refer to our Terms of Service and Defender Security Plugin Usage Documentation.

If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to get in touch with our support team. We’re here to help!

ChatGPT

Test #4: Malware Removal

A client has provided the following objection: “I’ve tried malware removal services before, and they didn’t help much.” How should we address the client’s objection?

WPMU DEV AI Search Assistant

To address the client’s objection about previous unsatisfactory experiences with malware removal services, you can highlight the unique benefits and thorough approach of WPMU DEV’s Malware Removal service. Here’s a suggested response:

I understand your concerns about previous malware removal services not meeting your expectations. At WPMU DEV, we take a comprehensive and meticulous approach to ensure your site is thoroughly cleaned and secured. Here are some key points that set our service apart:

Expert Team: Our dedicated team of experts specializes in malware removal and security hardening, ensuring that your site is in capable hands.

Thorough Cleanup Process: We reinstall all free plugins and WordPress core files to ensure no malicious code remains. For pro-licensed plugins, we work with you to ensure they are up-to-date and secure.

Backup and Security Configuration: Whenever possible, we perform a backup before starting the cleanup. After the cleanup, we configure the WPMU DEV Defender plugin to enhance your site’s security.

Detailed Reporting: At the end of the service, we provide a full report with relevant information and any additional steps you may need to take, such as updating outdated plugins with known vulnerabilities.

7-Day Guarantee: We offer a 7-day guarantee on our malware removal service. If any issues arise within this period, we will fix them at no additional cost.

Proactive Monitoring Option: For added peace of mind, you can opt for our Proactive Monitoring service, where our team monitors your site 24/7 and addresses any issues immediately.

For more details on our services, you can visit our Expert Services page.

We are confident that our comprehensive approach will provide the results you need. If you have any further questions or would like to proceed, please let us know.

By emphasizing the thoroughness of WPMU DEV’s process and the additional security measures taken, you can reassure the client that their site will be in good hands.

ChatGPT

Results

As you can see from the above tests, using basic prompts to generate the responses, ChatGPT’s has provided reasonable answers, if somewhat generic, while WPMU DEV’s AI Search Assistant is more specific and tailored to the services we provide.

With the first test, for example, AI Search Assistant even generated an email response that you could easily cut and paste, quickly edit, and promptly send to clients to address any questions, concerns, or objections they may have.

If you are reselling our services as a WPMU DEV White Label Reseller, simply modify the responses to suit your needs, and remember to change information like pricing, plugin names, company name, links, etc.

AI Search Assistant = Your New Sales Assistant

We hope these simple tests have shown you that our AI Search Assistant can be more than just a great support tool for getting your questions answered.

With a little experimentation, you will find that it can also be a very useful sales training tool. Use the tool to help you build your own internal sales manual, generate content for proposals, presentations, emails, or web copy, and a whole lot more.

Note: While AI Search Assistant is a support tool trained to know our products, it is not an alternative to searching for information about wider topics on paid OpenAI models like ChatGPT.

AI Search Assistant is available to all WPMU DEV members. You’ll find it in The Hub by clicking on the Support tab.

We hope you have found this information practical and useful. Incorporate this time-saving method to help you overcome objections and concerns from prospective clients about your services into your sales process and use our AI Assistant tool (and tools like ChatGPT), and watch your business flourish.

Sell More Web Services with WPMU DEV

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Our white label Reseller platform provides everything you need to succeed as a WordPress services provider. Easily resell web services like premium managed WordPress hosting, domains, business emails, and a full suite of professional web services (security, site optimization, SEO, backups, etc.) under your own brand.

We also provide everything to help switch clients over to your services with little to no disruptions … unlimited site management tools, client billing, ticket support, a branded client portal, assisted migrations, and a whole lot more!

All of this is available with an Agency membership.

If you have any questions about reselling our services or how we can help you become a more effective WordPress service provider, contact our expert and helpful 24/7 support team or see our Reseller documentation.

Refer to our comprehensive guide covering the new email sending requirements if you are not familiar with these new rules, what SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email protocols are, and what this all means for your business.

In this article, we’ll show you how your business can easily comply with the new rules if you use WPMU DEV’s Webmail or Email Hosting services.

We’ll cover:

• WPMU DEV’s Email Services Are Fully Compliant
  • Client Reports and Notifications
  • Webmail / Email Hosting
  • Bulk Emailing
    • Add DNS Records For 3rd-Party Email Services
• Use a Professional Email Address

WPMU DEV’s Email Services Are Fully Compliant

As shown in this article, if you run a check of the domain wpmudev.com using email verification tools, you will see that WPMU DEV meets all email service providers’ compliance requirements for email deliverability.

This is great news for your business!

Why?

Well, let’s start with …

Client Reports and Notifications

WPMU DEV’s SPF, DKIM, and DMARC policies are fully compliant with the stringent requirements set by all major email service providers.

This means that all your Hub-generated client reports and notifications sent from WPMU DEV’s email servers, including Uptime monitor reports, should have no problem reaching your intended recipients’ inboxes.

Webmail and Email Hosting

Not only will all reports and email notifications we send on your behalf reach your clients, but if you use or resell our Webmail or Email Hosting services, so will the emails that you send out to your clients, and the emails that your clients send out.

Best of all, all required email compliance is automatically built into our Webmail and email hosting services, so there’s nothing to configure for general emailing.

Let’s take a closer look…

We’ll use Webmail for this example and assume that you are hosting your domain on WPMU DEV’s servers or at least managing your DNS records with us.

When you set up Webmail and configure your email domain, you’ll see that our system automatically creates and adds SPF and DKIM records to your domain’s DNS records.

Let’s test this out by sending an email from our Webmail account to a Gmail account.

First, log into Webmail…

Next, compose an email and send it to a Gmail account.

When the email reaches your inbox, go to your Gmail account .

You can view the Internet header for the email by opening the email, clicking on the vertical ellipsis icon, and selecting the Show original option from the menu.

As you can see, the email sent from the Webmail account meets SPF and DKIM requirements.

Additionally, setting up an email address using Webmail or our hosted email service requires using Transport Layer Security (TLS), so your emails automatically meet this requirement too!

If you or your clients are using Webmail or our hosted email services for regular business emailing purposes, you don’t need to worry about setting up DMARC for your domain.

Bulk Emailing

As per Google’s and Yahoo’s requirements, if you plan to send 5,000 emails or more, you will need to publish a valid DMARC policy.

Add DNS Records For 3rd-Party Email Services

If you currently host an email domain with WPMU DEV that you plan to use for bulk sending purposes (emailing 5,000+ users a day), then check with your bulk sending provider for instructions on how to add the records you will need to comply with their services.

For example, let’s say you send email newsletters using a domain’s DNS managed with WPMU DEV and an email marketing service like Mailchimp, GetResponse, Sender, HubSpot, etc.

In this example, we’ll use Aweber for a domain’s DNS managed with WPMU DEV that needs authentication.

To authenticate the domain, find their setup instructions. In Aweber’s case, a notice displays in the user’s account dashboard with a link to their Domain Authentication screen.

To authenticate DKIM, Aweber requires adding various new CNAME records to the domain’s DNS records.

So, the first step is to copy the Name (Host) record to the clipboard…

Next, go into The Hub > Domains and locate your domain…

Click on the vertical ellipsis next to the domain and select Manage DNS.

In the DNS Records screen, click on Add Record.

Select CNAME from the Record type dropdown menu and paste the Hostname record from your clipboard.

Go back to your email service provider’s screen, copy the Value key to your clipboard, and paste it into the Alias field, then click the Add button.

Repeat this process until all of your service provider’s required records have been added in your domain’s DNS management area.

If a DMARC policy is required, follow the same copy and paste process as described for adding DKIM records above.

Note that in Aweber’s case, they require a new TXT record to be created for adding a DMARC policy, not a CNAME record.

Create a new TXT record in The Hub’s DNS management area and paste the content provided into the Hostname and Value fields. Click the Add button when done.

You will see the new record has been added to the Records section.

Go back to your service provider’s dashboard and refresh their settings to validate your domain’s records.

If you need help creating or adding DNS records to WPMU DEV’s DNS manager, see our documentation.

Use a Professional Email Address

As we explain in this article on how to set up free email accounts with WPMU DEV’s managed WordPress hosting, it’s important to use a professional email address for your business for the following reasons:

• Boost Credibility: Sending emails from a free email address undermines your professionalism.
• Enhanced Deliverability: Professional addresses are less likely to end up in spam folders, improving email engagement.
• Brand Trust: A branded email domain fosters trust and credibility, leading to higher open and click-through rates.
• Branding Opportunities: Consistent display of your brand in emails reinforces brand identity and recognition.
• Control and Security: Professional email addresses offer more control over infrastructure and security settings, enhancing data protection.

Securing a professional business email address helps to enhance deliverability and improves email engagement, which are important and relevant to this discussion.

WPMU DEV Email Services Get Your Emails Delivered

If you are a WPMU DEV domain reseller, you can help your clients improve their email deliverability and lower potential complaint rates by advising them to secure a professional email address that matches their website domain and setting these up on our Webmail or Pop3 email services.

Sending emails from a professional email address using our Webmail or POP3 email services is the best and easiest way to automatically cover (almost all) your bases.

With our fully compliant hosted services powering your and your clients’ emails, all that’s left for you to do is make sure you have that unsubscribe link in your emails, compose your message, and hit the send button.

If you have any questions about our email services, check our Webmail or email hosting documentation, or contact our expert 24/7 support team.

In this comprehensive guide, we show you how to get started with Webmail, how to use its features, and how to resell professional business email to clients. We also provide information on the benefits of offering IMAP-based email services for WPMU DEV platform users and resellers.

** Great news… Webmail is available to all WPMU DEV members! **

This includes:

• Premium plan members
• The Free Hub (TFH) users
• All single hosting memberships
• All non-Premium memberships (Basic, Standard, Plus)

The only difference is the price. Each business email account (e.g. hey@yourcompany.tld) is considered an individual account and can be purchased at the following cost:

• Premium plan members = $1 /mth per email account.
• All other members = $2 /mth per email account.

Read the full article to learn all about Webmail or click on one of the links below to jump to any section:

• Overview of Webmail
• Getting Started with Webmail
  • Webmail Manager
• Managing Your Emails
  • Email Forwarding
  • Webmail Login
  • Email Aliases
• Additional Email Management Features
  • Email Information
  • DNS Records
  • Configurations
  • Client Association
• Reseller Integration
• Email Protocols – Quick Primer
  • What is IMAP
  • IMAP vs POP
• Professional Business Email For Your Clients

Overview of Webmail

In addition to our current email hosting offerings, Webmail is a standalone service that allows for greater flexibility in email account creation.

WPMU DEV’s Webmail:

• Is affordably priced
• Offers a superior email service with high standards of quality and reliability.
• Does not require a third-party app to work.
• Lets you set up email accounts on any domain you own or manage, whether it’s a root domain like mydomain.com or a subdomain such as store.mydomain.com.
• Lets you provide clients with professional business email no matter where their domain is hosted (or whether the domain is associated with a site in your Hub or not)
• Can be accessed from any device, even directly from your web browser.
• Can be white labeled and resold under your own brand with Reseller.

Read more about the benefits of using Webmail.

Let’s show you now how to set your clients up with email accounts and a fully-functional mailbox in just a few clicks, using any domain, and no matter where their domain is hosted.

Getting Started With Webmail

Webmail is very quick and easy to set up.

Just head on over to The Hub and get acquainted with the latest powerful tool in your complete WordPress site management toolbox…

Webmail Manager

The Hub lets you create, manage, and access IMAP email accounts for any domain you own from one central location, even domains that are not directly associated with a site in your Hub.

Click on Webmail on the main menu at the top of the screen…

This will bring you to the Webmail Overview screen.

If you haven’t set up an email account yet, you’ll see the screen below. Click on the “Create New Email” button to get started.

As mentioned earlier, Webmail gives you the choice of creating an email account from a domain you manage in The Hub, or a domain managed elsewhere.

For this tutorial, we’ll select a domain being managed in The Hub.

Select the domain you want to associate your email account with from the dropdown menu and click the arrow to continue.

Next, create your email address, choose a strong password, and click on the blue arrow button to continue.

You will see a payment screen displaying the cost of your new email address and billing start date. Click the button to make the payment and create your new email account.

Your new email account will be automatically created after payment has been successfully processed.

The last step to make your email work correctly is to add the correct DNS records.

Fortunately, if your site or domain are hosted with WPMU DEV, Webmail Manager can easily and automatically do this for you too!

Note: If your domain is managed elsewhere, you will need to copy and manually add the DNS records at your registrar or DNS manager (e.g. Cloudflare).

Click on the View DNS Records button to continue.

This will bring up the DNS Records screen.

As our example site is hosted with WPMU DEV, all you need to do is click on the ADD DNS Records button and your records will be automatically created and added to your email account.

After completing this step, wait for the DNS records to propagate successfully before verifying the DNS.

You can use an online tool like https://dnschecker.org to check the DNS propagation status.

Note: DNS changes can take 24-48 hours to propagate across the internet, so allow some time for DNS propagation to occur, especially if the domain is hosted elsewhere.

Click the Verify DNS button to check if the DNS records have propagated.

If your DNS records have propagated successfully, you will see green ticks for all records under the DNS Status column.

Your email account is now fully set up and ready to use.

Repeat the above process to create and add more emails.

Now that you know how to create a new email account, let’s look at how to manage your emails effectively.

Managing Your Emails

If you have set up one or more email accounts, navigate to the Webmail Manager screen any time to view a list of all connected domains, their status, number of email accounts associated with each domain, and additional options.

To manage your email accounts, click on a domain name or select Manage Domain Email from the Options dropdown menu (the vertical ellipsis icon).

This opens up the email management section for the selected domain.

The Email Accounts tab lists all the existing email accounts for that domain, status and creation date information, plus additional email management options that we’ll explore in a moment.

Email accounts can have the following statuses: active, suspended, or disabled.

Active accounts can send and receive emails, provided DNS records have been set up and propagated correctly.

Suspended accounts occur if email activity is in violation of our webmail provider’s email sending policy.

A disabled account (see further below) only disables the sending and receiving of emails and webmail access for that email account. It does not affect billing.

Note: Unless you delete the account, you will still be charged for a disabled email account.

Before we discuss managing individual email accounts, let’s look at other main features of Webmail Manager.

Email Forwarding

Email forwarding automatically redirects emails sent to one email address to another designated email address. It allows users to receive emails sent to a specific address without having to check multiple accounts. For example, emails sent to info@yourcompany.tld can be automatically forwarded to john@yourcompany.tld.

Every email account includes 10 email forwarders. This allows you to automatically forward emails to multiple addresses simultaneously (e.g. john@yourcompany.tld, accounts@yourcompany.tld, etc.).

To activate email forwarding hover over the arrow icon and turn its status to On and then click on Manage Email Forwarding to set up email forwarders.

This will bring up the Email Forwarding tab. Here, you can easily add, delete, and edit email forwarders.

If no email forwarders exist for your email account, click the Create Email Forwarder button to create the first one.

In the Add Email Forwarder screen, enter the forwarding email address where you would like incoming email messages to redirect to and click Save.

As stated, you can add multiple forwarding email addresses to each email account (up to 10).

Webmail Login

With Webmail, all emails are stored on our servers, so in addition to being able to access and view emails on any device, every webmail account includes a mailbox that can be accessed online directly via Webmail’s web browser interface.

There are several ways to log in and view emails.

Access Webmail From The Hub

To log into webmail directly via The Hub, you can go to the Email Account Management > Email Accounts screen of your domain, click the envelope icon next to the email account, and click on the Webmail Login link…

Or, if you are working inside an individual email account, just click on the Webmail Login link displayed in all of the account’s management screens…

This will log you directly into the webmail interface for that email account.

The Webmail interface should look familiar and feel intuitive to most users. If help using any of Webmail’s features is required, click the Help icon on the menu sidebar to access detailed help documentation.

Let’s look at other ways to access Webmail.

Access Webmail From The Hub Client

If you have set up your own branded client portal using The Hub Client plugin, your team members and clients can access and manage emails via Webmail with team user roles configured to give them access permissions and SSO (Single Sign-On) options enabled.

This allows users to seamlessly log into an email account from your client portal without having to enter login credentials.

Direct Access URL

Another way to log into Webmail is via Direct Access URL.

To access webmail directly from your web browser for any email account, enter the following URL into your browser exactly as shown here: https://webmail.yourwpsite.email/, then enter the email address and password, and click “Login.”

Note: The above example uses our white labeled URL address webmail.yourwpsite.email to log into Webmail via a web browser. However, you can also brand your webmail accounts with your own domain so users can access their email from a URL like webmail.your-own-domain.tld.

For more details on how to set up your own branded domain URL, see our Webmail documentation.

Email Aliases

An email alias is a virtual email address that redirects emails to a primary email account. It serves as an alternative name for a single mailbox, enabling users to create multiple email addresses that all direct messages to the same inbox.

For instance, the following could all be aliases for the primary email address john@mysite.tld:

• sales@mysite.tld
• support@mysite.tld
• info@mysite.tld

Webmail lets you create up to 10 email aliases per email account.

To create an alias for an email account, click on the vertical ellipsis icon and select Add Alias.

Enter the alias username(s) you would like to create in the Add Alias modal and click Save.

Emails sent to any of these aliases will be delivered to your current email account.

Additional Email Management Features

In addition to the features and options found in the Email Accounts tab that we have just discussed, Webmail lets you manage various options and settings for each individual email account.

Let’s take a brief look at some of these options and settings.

Email Information

To manage an individual email account:

1. Click on The Hub > Webmail to access the Email Accounts tab
2. Click on the domain you have set up to use Webmail
3. Click on the specific email account (i.e. the email address) you wish to manage.

Click on the Webmail management screens to access and manage individual email accounts.

The Email Information tab lets you edit your current email account and password and displays important information, such as status, creation date (this is the date your billing starts for this email account), storage used, and current email send limit.

In addition to the Email Information tab, you can click on the Email Forwarding tab to manage your email forwarders and the Email Aliases tab to manage your email aliases for your email account.

Note: Newly created accounts have send limits set up to prevent potential spamming and account suspension. These limits gradually increase over a two-week period, allowing email accounts to send up to 500 emails every 24 hours.

Coming soon, you will also be able to add more storage to your email accounts if additional space is required.

Now that we have drilled down and looked at all the management tabs for an individual email account, let’s explore some additional features of the Webmail Manager.

Go back to The Hub > Webmail and click on one of the email accounts you have set up.

DNS Records

Click on the DNS Records tab to view the DNS Records of your email domain.

Note: The DNS Records tab is available to team members and client custom roles, so team members and clients can access these if you give them permission.

Configurations

Click on the Configurations tab to view and download configuration settings that allow you to set up email accounts in applications other than Webmail.

The Configurations tab is also available for both team member and client custom roles.

Client Association

If you want to allow clients to manage their own email accounts, you will need to set up your client account first, assign permissions to allow the client to view Webmail, then link the client account with the email domain in the Client Association tab.

After setting up your client in The Hub, navigate to the Client Association tab (The Hub > Webmail > Email Domain) and click on Add Client.

Select the client from the dropdown menu and click Add.

Notes:

• When you associate a client with an email domain, SSO for the email domain is disabled in The Hub. However, your client will be able to access Webmail login via The Hub Client plugin.
• The Client Association tab is only made available for team member custom roles.

Reseller Integration

We’re currently working on bringing full auto-provisioning of emails to our Reseller platform. Until this feature is released, you can manually resell emails to clients and bill them using the Clients & Billing tool.

Once Webmail has been fully integrated with our Reseller platform, you will be able to rebrand Webmail as your own and resell everything under one roof: hosting, domains, templates, plugins, expert support…and now business emails!

If you need help with Reseller, check out our Reseller documentation.

Congratulations! Now you know how to set up, manage, and resell Webmail in your business as part of your digital services.

Email Protocols – Quick Primer

WPMU DEV offers the convenience of using both IMAP and POP3 email.

Not sure what IMAP is, how it works, or how IMAP differs from POP3? Then read below for a quick primer on these email protocols.

What is IMAP?

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a standard protocol used to retrieve emails from a mail server. It allows users to access their emails from multiple devices like a phone, laptop, or tablet, because it stores emails on the server, rather than downloading them to a single device.

Since emails are managed and stored on the server, this reduces the need for extensive local storage and allows for easy backup and recovery.

Additional points about IMAP:

• Users can organize emails into folders, flag them for priority, and save drafts on the server.
• It supports multiple email clients syncing with the server, ensuring consistent message status across devices.
• IMAP operates as an intermediary between the email server and client, enabling remote access from any device.
• When users read emails via IMAP, they’re viewing them directly from the server without downloading them locally.
• IMAP downloads messages only upon user request, enhancing efficiency compared to other protocols like POP3.
• Messages persist on the server unless deleted by the user.
• IMAP uses port 143, while IMAP over SSL/TLS uses port 993 for secure communication.

The advantages of using IMAP include the following:

• Multi-Device Access: IMAP supports multiple logins, allowing users to connect to the email server from various devices simultaneously.
• Flexibility: Unlike POP3, IMAP enables users to access their emails from different devices, making it ideal for users who travel frequently or need access from multiple locations.
• Shared Mailbox: A single IMAP mailbox can be shared by multiple users, facilitating collaboration and communication within teams.
• Organizational Tools: Users can organize emails on the server by creating folders and subfolders, enhancing their efficiency in managing email correspondence.
• Email Functions Support: IMAP supports advanced email functions such as search and sort, improving user experience and productivity.
• Offline Access: IMAP can be used offline, allowing users to access previously downloaded emails even without an internet connection.

There are some challenges to setting up and running your own IMAP service, which is why using a solution like WPMU DEV’s Webmail is highly recommended:

• Hosting an IMAP service can be resource-intensive, requiring more server storage and bandwidth to manage multiple connections and the storage of emails.
• IMAP requires implementing SSL encryption to ensure secure email communication.
• Smaller businesses might find it challenging to allocate the necessary IT resources for managing an IMAP server efficiently.

IMAP vs POP3: What’s The Difference?

IMAP and POP3 are both client-server email retrieval protocols, but they are two different methods for accessing email messages from a server.

IMAP is designed for modern email users. It allows users to access your email from multiple devices because it keeps their emails on the server. When users read, delete, or organize their emails, these changes are synchronized across all devices.

For example, if you read an email on your phone, it will show as being read on your laptop as well.

POP3, on the other hand, is simpler and downloads emails from the server to a single device, then usually deletes them from the server. This means if users access their emails from a different device, they won’t see the emails that were downloaded to the first device.

For instance, if you download an email via POP3 on your computer, that email may not be accessible on your phone later.

Here are some of the key differences between IMAP and POP3:

Storage Approach

• IMAP: Users can store emails on the server and access them from any device. It functions more like a remote file server.
• POP3: Emails are saved in a single mailbox on the server and downloaded to the user’s device when accessed.

Access Flexibility

• IMAP: Allows access from multiple devices, enabling users to view and manage emails consistently across various platforms.
• POP3: Emails are typically downloaded to one device and removed from the server.

Handling of Emails

• IMAP: Maintains emails on the server, allowing users to organize, flag, and manage them remotely.
• POP3: Operates as a “store-and-forward” service, where emails are retrieved and then removed from the server.

In practice, IMAP is more suited for users who want to manage their emails from multiple devices or locations, offering greater flexibility and synchronization. POP could be considered for situations where email access is primarily from a single device, or there is a need to keep local copies of emails while removing them from the server to save space.

Essentially, IMAP prioritizes remote access and centralized email management on the server, while POP3 focuses on downloading and storing emails locally.

Professional Business Email For Your Clients

Integrating email hosting, particularly IMAP, with web hosting to create a seamless platform for managing client websites and emails under one roof is challenging, costly, and complex.

With WPMU DEV’s Webmail, you can enhance your email management capabilities and provide clients with affordable and professional business email no matter where their domain is hosted that is easy-to-use and does not require a third-party app.

Note: If you don’t require the full features of IMAP email for a site hosted with WPMU DEV, we also offer the option to create POP3 email accounts with our hosted email. These accounts can be linked to any email client of your choice, ensuring flexibility and convenience.

If you’re yet to set up a WPMU DEV account, we encourage you to become a Premium member. It’s 100% risk-free and includes everything you need to manage your clients and resell services like hosting, domains, emails, and more, all under your own brand.

If you’re already a WPMU DEV member, then head over to your Hub and click on Webmail to get started. If you need any help, our support team is available 24×7 (or ask our AI assistant) and you can also check out our extensive webmail documentation.

Reselling domains is a great way to get new business through the door, offer a low-cost web service, and retain clients for the long-term.

WPMU DEV’s Reseller is an all-in-one platform that lets you offer clients digital services such as reseller hosting, template reselling, domain reseller, and more, and boost your revenue with hands-free automated management.

Note: Reseller is only available to Premium plan members.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show how to set up and integrate full domain reseller automation with your business, covering the following sections:

• Getting Started: Pre-Requisite Step
• Add Domains and Set Pricing
• Edit Domain Details
• Configure Domain Reseller Settings
• Make Domains Available For Purchase
• Manage Client Domains
• Additional Features (Coming Soon)

Alternatively, you can check out the video below, which takes you through the entire Reseller setup process:

Getting Started: Pre-Requisite Step

Before you can resell domains, you need to set up your Clients & Billing account in The Hub.

This step is covered fully in our documentation and in this tutorial: How To Set Up Clients & Billing.

Have you completed this step?

Great! Then let’s show you how easy and straightforward setting up Domain Reseller is …

Add Domains and Set Pricing

Go to The Hub > Reseller > Domain Reseller and click on the +Add TLDs button …

This will bring up the Add TLDs screen, where you can select which top-level domains (TLDs) you want to resell and set retail pricing for your domains.

There are currently 250+ TLDs you can resell under your own brand (and more coming soon).

After selecting TLDs, the next step is to add a markup (i.e. your profit) to your wholesale domain pricing across all domains.

There are two ways to set the markup price:

1. Specify a percentage: For example, setting a value of “10” will increase the price of all domains by 10%, so a domain that costs you US$20 to buy will retail to your clients at US$22.
2. Set a fixed price markup (in USD): With this option selected, setting a value of “10” will increase the price of all domains by USD$10, so a domain that costs you US$20 to buy will retail to your clients at US$30.

Note: After setting a global markup price, you can edit the markup for individual TLDs, as we’ll show you later.

After selecting your TLDs and setting your global markup price, click on the Add TLDs button to save your settings.

Your selected TLDs will be automatically configured and display in The Hub’s Domain Reseller tab.

Edit Domain Details

Reseller applies a global markup to domains during the initial set up. However, you can also set individual and bulk markups to domains.

To edit an individual domain’s markup value, click on the ellipsis icon next to the domain and select Update TLD.

Specify the % or USD value of the markup for the selected domain and click on the Update TLD button. This adjustment will not affect other domains in your account.

To bulk edit the markup for multiple domains, tick the checkboxes of the domains you wish to edit and click on Update TLDs. (Note: Click on the checkbox next to Update TLDs to toggle and select/deselect all domains).

Select multiple domains to edit by clicking on their checkboxes. Specify the % or USD value of the markup for all selected domains and click on the Update TLDs button to adjust their pricing.

You can also remove TLDs from your account individually or in bulk, by either clicking on the ellipsis icon of a single domain, or selecting multiple domains and clicking on Delete TLDs.

A notification message will appear asking you to confirm your deletion.

Please note the following:

• Clicking Delete will remove the selected domains from your account. This will prevent new clients from buying the deleted TLDs. Any existing domains that have already been purchased with the deleted TLDs will remain intact, but your clients won’t be able to renew them.
• Click Cancel to abort the deletion request and retain all selected domains in your account.

Additional editing features of Domain Reseller include a search filter that you can use to quickly locate domain extensions.

You can also add TLDs to your account by clicking the + Add TLDs button.

This feature is useful if new TLDs are introduced later to Reseller, or if you have not selected all available domains during your initial Domain Reseller setup.

Note: If the + Add TLDs button is grayed out, it means that all available TLDs have already been added to your Domain Reseller account.

Now that you have a better understanding of how to add and edit domains, let’s look at how to configure Domain Reseller settings.

Configure Domain Reseller Settings

After adding domains and specifying their markup, head over to the Reseller > Settings tab to configure your Domain Reseller settings.

Here’s a brief overview of each setting:

Default Client Role

This section lets you specify the default client role that will be assigned to new clients who purchase domains.

Note: Go to The Hub > Clients & Billings > Roles to set up and configure roles for your clients. For more information see our documentation: Client Roles.

Round Off Prices

Select the number of decimal places to round off and display TLD pricing for domains.

Taxes

The tax rates you select here will be automatically added to the total price of the domain purchase during checkout.

To select taxes, create one or more tax rates in the Taxes section of The Hub > Clients & Billing area.

After adding TLDs to Domain Reseller and configuring your domain pricing and settings, it’s time to make these available for purchase.

Make Domains Available For Purchase

With Reseller, clients can easily purchase domains directly from your website, all under your own brand.

Your clients will not be directed away to a third-party payment processor to complete their purchase. Everything is handled on your site from start to finish using our white label client portal plugin, The Hub Client.

If you need help setting up a client portal on your site using The Hub Client, see this tutorial: How To Create A Fully-Branded, Customized Client Portal With WPMU DEV

After installing and configuring The Hub Client on your main website, navigate to The Hub Client > Reseller section in your dashboard menu…

Next, click on the Domain Reseller tab.

The Domain Reseller screen will display a list of all the domains and pricing markups that you have set up in The Hub, as well as links to support, documentation, and a configurable widget that allows you to embed domains for resale on your website.

To configure the domains widget, scroll down the Domain Reseller page and click on the Customize domain widget button.

The customizable widget allows you to change the background, label and button colors of the domains table on your site.

The Hub Client generates a shortcode and a Domain Reseller Gutenberg block that lets you easily embed the widget anywhere on your site.

In the screenshot below, you can see how we have added the widget to a page using the Domain Reseller block and the block’s available settings.

When done, simply publish and visit your page to view and test your live widget.

Type in a domain name into the search field and click on the Search Domain button to view the results your clients will see when visiting your site.

Here is a nifty little feature of the Domain Reseller widget:

If a client types in a domain with the TLD extension included (e.g. exampledomain.com), the results page will display (Exact Match) next to the domain if it’s available.

After searching for available domain names and clicking on the Buy Now button, your client will be asked to create an account on your client portal site or log into an existing account.

The client will then be stepped through the domain registration process … all inside your client portal!

First, they will be asked to enter their Registrant Information details.

Next, they will be taken to the checkout screen and asked to complete their purchase.

Manage Client Domains

The automation doesn’t stop after clients successfully register and purchase domains from your site.

You’ll be automatically notified via email of every domain purchase.

Purchased domains are accessed and managed inside your white label client portal, where clients can also pay for renewals and add new domains.

Note: If domains are not set to auto renew, your clients will automatically receive domain expiry reminders 90, 60, and 30 days before the expiry date.

You can access all of your clients’ purchase details from The Hub’s Clients & Billing section.

With domain reseller set up, your clients can now search for and buy domains directly from your site or client portal, under your own brand, at the price you set … all automated from start to finish!

Refer to our documentation section for detailed step-by-step instructions on setting up and using the Clients & Billing tool, The Hub Client plugin, and all of Domain Reseller’s features.

Also, check out our Reseller tutorials for practical tips and additional information.

Additional Features (Coming Soon)

In addition to reselling domains, hosting, and templates directly on your website through your white-label client portal, we are working on a host of other great features that Resellers will soon have access to.

For example, domain and hosting purchases currently require separate checkouts. Very soon, when your clients buy hosting they’ll be prompted to add a domain (or vice versa), and everything will be automatically connected and propagated for them, including DNS setup … making the entire process seamless and hands-free for you!

Additional features of the Reseller platform that we are working on include:

• Country-specific TLDs
• Domain Transfers
• Webmail
• A fully integrated ticketing system for the client portal that will streamline the way you communicate with your reseller clients and assist them.

Become a Domain Reseller Today

As mentioned earlier, you must be on the Premium plan to access our Reseller platform, which includes domain reselling automation (with wholesale domain pricing), reseller hosting (plus $144 free yearly hosting credit), template reselling, and more!

Premium comes with a full risk-free money-back guarantee. So, if within the first 30 days you’re not satisfied with the platform, just cancel and we’ll refund you in full, no questions asked.

In fact, we’re so excited about the future of our Reseller platform and its tremendous potential to transform and grow your business, that we are giving away $1 million in hosting credits to Premium members.

Read all about our $1 million giveaway!

At the end of last year we finally unveiled our Reseller platform to the world, and many of you are already using it to create amazing businesses.

However, since the initial release, one vital ingredient has been missing that you’ve been patiently waiting for…

So we’re thrilled to announce today that full domain reseller automation is finally here!

This means you can now automate reselling domains, hosting, and templates directly on your website, or through your white-label client portal.

But wait, there’s more!

To celebrate the completion of Reseller, we’re also doing a massive $1 million giveaway for those looking to kickstart their Reseller business, without having to put any money down.

Read on for a quick overview of Reseller’s new domain automation capabilities, and more details on how you can get your hands on a share of the $1 million!

Feel free to skip to what interests you most:

• Domain Reseller Overview
• The million-dollar giveaway! $$

Domain Reseller Overview

Resell all supported TLDs under your own brand

No more recommending third-party domain providers to clients, or buying on their behalf, we’ve made it super easy to set up profitable domains to sell to your clients, under your own brand.

You can choose from 250+ wholesale-priced top-level domain names (TLDs). Just apply your chosen % or $ markup, and voilá, the domains will be added as reseller products, ready for resale.

Add an easy search & buy widget on your site

Making your domains available for purchase on your website couldn’t be easier.

You can customize how domains will be shown on your site with our customizable widget, which allows you to change the background, label and button colors. Then easily embed the widget onto your site with shortcode or Gutenberg block.

Effortless and automated client self-checkout

Your reseller domains can be easily purchased directly from your website. No jumping away to a third-party payment processor – it’s all handled from start to finish on your site.

Purchased domains will then be accessed and managed inside your white label client portal, where clients can also pay for renewals and add new domains.

Right now, domain and hosting checkout are separate, but soon when your clients buy hosting they’ll be prompted to add a domain (or vice versa), and everything will be automatically connected and propagated for them, including DNS setup!

We’re also building a fully integrated ticketing system for the client portal that will streamline the way you communicate with your reseller clients and assist them.

That’s it, your clients can now search for and buy domains directly from you, all under your own brand, at the price you set, all automated from start to finish.

The million-dollar giveaway! $$

Been thinking about trying our Reseller platform? Or maybe you’ve always wanted to start a reseller business, but never had the time or resources…

This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Because we’re literally GIVING you free credit to kickstart any business you dream up!

There’s also zero risk, because as well as funding you to get started with Reseller, you will receive top notch support for your business at every step from our 24/7 expert team.

To be eligible for a share of $1 million hosting credit, all you have to do is be an Agency member and use Reseller, as these credits can only be used exclusively through the platform, and put toward hosting sites only.

To claim your credit, simply reach out to our team via live chat or contact us directly here.

How much credit can you claim?

Well, that all depends on your business and what you’re planning!

When you get in touch, we’ll discuss how you plan to use Reseller and your rough business plan (we can help you with this if needed!), this will then help us determine a fair credit amount to help you get things off the ground.

Once done, we’ll add the free credit to your account, ready for you to use instantly – it’s that easy!

We’re also operating this credit giveaway on a ‘first in, first served’ basis, so if you’re interested be quick, you don’t want to miss out on securing a slice of the $1 million pie!

Become an Agency member to claim your share of the $1 million

Keen to join the celebration and get your hands on a share of the $1 million? As mentioned, signing up to our Agency plan gives you full access.

Plus, you get instant exclusives like $144 free yearly hosting credit, and access to VIP pricing, so your giveaway credit will go even further.

And of course, you get full access to our Reseller platform, including the brand new domain automation capabilities featured in this article.

Still unsure? We get it, and Agency comes with a full risk-free money-back guarantee. So if you’re not satisfied the platform is delivering what you wanted within the first 30 days, just cancel and we’ll refund you in full, no questions asked.

WPMU DEV’s Reseller gives you everything you need to build a profitable reseller business and generate recurring income — from reselling white label hosting and site management tools, to Pro plugins, integrated client billing and management, branded client portal, reseller support … and over 100+ professional website templates covering a wide range of niches and industries!

Build websites faster with a choice of 100+ beautiful and modern premium templates.

This guide shows you how to boost and automate your reseller business using our growing library of professionally-designed website templates and how to sell your own website templates using our enhanced templates feature.

We’ll cover the following areas:

• 100+ Beautiful Modern Website Templates
• Website Templates for Popular Page Builders and Themes
• Fast and Easy Deployment with One-Click Templates
• Templates to Use and Resell
• Adding Templates to Reseller Products

Let’s jump in…

100+ Beautiful Modern Website Templates

Website templates are a game-changer for digital resellers. Templates reduce development time and offer an affordable alternative to custom development by providing clients with accessible high-quality web design.

Templates can also transform how agencies approach web development where the need for fast and cost-effective solutions is key to attracting and keeping clients.

A WPMU DEV membership includes access to a vast template library with over 100 professionally-designed website templates catering to different niches and industries (e.g. corporate, creative, healthcare, e-commerce, and more).

Use these templates to reduce your project costs, speed up your web design process, and provide your clients with an on-brand finished product … automatically!

To access the template library, go to The Hub > Site Templates.

In the Site Templates screen, you’ll find two tabs:

• WPMU DEV Templates – This is where all of our pre-configured templates are stored.
• My Templates – This section lets you create and manage your own custom site templates.

Click on the WPMU DEV Templates tab to access all of our pre-configured templates.

We’ve designed our templates page to help you find templates suitable for your next project quickly and easily.

For example, to select a range of templates, use the Sort (by Recently Added, A-Z, Z-A), filter (by category, themes, or builders), and search features located at the top of the page.

Filtering templates by Category, Themes, or Builders is especially handy if you are building a site for a specific industry or niche, or have a favorite theme or page builder that you prefer working with.

Filter templates by clicking on items to select or deselect categories, themes, or page builders. To clear all filters just click the link at the bottom of the Filter Templates by panel.

You can also tag your favorite templates by clicking on the star icon to have them listed at the very top of the page. Just make sure to enable Pin favorites to top in the Recently Added feature menu.

Website Templates for Popular Page Builders and Themes

The versatile themes available in the Templates section are built with various popular page builders and themes.

These templates provide a wealth of options, features, and functionalities unique to specific industries, a broad selection of modern and beautiful designs to ensure that you can meet the needs and requirements of your clients, and integrate seamlessly with popular page builders and themes including:

• Gutenberg
• Elementor
• Brizy
• Colibri
• Astra
• Neve
• Kadence WP
• Beaver Builder
• Zakra

If you’re unsure which page builder or theme was used to create the template, refer to the icons below the thumbnail.

Note: To save custom templates created with a paid or licensed page builder or theme, use the My Templates section.

Fast and Easy Deployment with One-Click Templates

To quickly create a new site using a specific template (or just preview how the template looks), hover over the template’s thumbnail and click on the Preview Template and Create Site buttons.

All of our hosting plans include rapid one-click template deployment to simplify the process of setting up websites. Simply select a template when creating a new site and these will automatically be set up for you or your clients in minutes.

Templates to Use and Resell

Templates are available to members on all plans and are included with WPMU DEV’s Reseller platform, so you can use them in your own projects to build client sites or resell them.

Note: To resell custom or built-in templates with Reseller to clients as part of your web development and digital service offerings requires being on the Premium plan.

Adding Templates To Reseller Products

Including templates with Reseller is easy.

Go to The Hub and click on the Reseller tab …

Create a new hosting reseller product or edit an existing one and navigate to the Reseller Configurations screen …

Choose whether to allow clients to choose a template when purchasing hosting or specify a selected template when new sites are created.

Select all the templates you want to make available to clients using the “Templates Available to Clients” dropdown menu and search feature.

You can build a gallery of templates to offer your clients using any WPMU DEV template and your own custom templates.

For more information on how to create and save custom-built templates, see our custom templates documentation or check out this article on how to create and sell your own site templates.

If you want clients to use a specific template when creating a new site, make sure to select the “Force selected template on new sites” option.

Only the templates you have selected for your reseller products will display to clients purchasing your products.

For full details on creating reseller products with templates, see our Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Reseller.

Transform Your Business with Website Templates

Website templates can revolutionize and transform your business by streamlining the web development process and boosting efficiency, ensuring client satisfaction, an additional revenue source, and business growth through automation.

Whether you are a newcomer to the industry seeking an easy start to web development or an experienced developer looking to fast track projects by focusing on customization and advanced features, having over 100 one-click templates at your disposal can be especially useful for urgent projects, clients with small budgets, and an indispensable asset to boosting your reselling business.

Our diverse template library caters to various client needs and will ensure quicker website launches, eliminate the need for extensive coding and design, expedite project completion, and provide your clients with a cost-friendly alternative to custom development.

Ongoing updates, instant website creation, easy setup and customization, easy replication of saved customized designs, and rapid deployment with any of our hosting plans are just some of the many benefits to bundling templates with your website building services.

If you’re not a WPMU DEV member yet, sign up today for our all inclusive Premium membership and start reselling services like hosting, templates, plugins, domains, and more under your own brand. It’s 100% risk-free and the best business decision you’ll make.

If you are a digital services agency or a web developer looking to generate additional revenue by providing web hosting to clients, you could lease your own server and handle all of the technical areas yourself, or simply partner with a reseller hosting company and let them take care of all the hosting issues and headaches, leaving you free to grow your business.

But…with so many hosting companies offering reseller hosting, which one provides the best platform for your agency? What should you look for in a hosting reseller program? What traps and pitfalls should you avoid when deciding which hosting provider to partner with?

This guide will answer all of these questions. You will learn what to look for in a reseller hosting partner to ensure your long-term success, understand the pros and cons of different reseller platforms and programs … we’ll even provide a list of reseller hosting companies with links to their reseller pages.

We’ll cover the following areas:

• Pitfalls to Avoid When Choosing Reseller Hosting Companies
  • 1. Beware of Affiliate Reviews
  • 2. Avoid Reseller Platforms That Won’t Integrate Fully with Your Business
• The Ideal Reseller Hosting Platform
• Reseller Hosting Companies – What To Look For
  • 1. Pricing & Profitability
  • 2. Quality Hosting Products
  • 3. Reseller Hosting and Website Management
  • 4. White Label Branding and Customization
  • 5. Client Portal and Automation
  • 6. Client Billing, Invoicing, and Management
  • 7. Reseller and Client Support
  • 8. Additional Reseller Features
• Best Hosting Reseller Programs

Let’s jump right in…

Pitfalls to Avoid When Choosing Reseller Hosting Companies

There are many different companies offering reseller hosting to choose from and you will want to partner with the provider that is best suited for your business.

Before embarking on your journey of research, let’s look at two common pitfalls to avoid when choosing a reseller hosting company.

Pitfall #1 – Beware of Affiliate Reviews

If you search Google for anything related to reseller hosting, eg:

• best reseller web hosting
• best hosting reseller program
• top reseller hosting company
• etc.,

You’ll find that all of the articles in the organic results section recommending the “best reseller web hosting companies” use affiliate links.

You aren’t necessarily going to find the best reseller hosting company for your business by searching Google, because:

1. Most reseller hosting review articles won’t recommend companies that don’t offer an affiliate program, and
2. The companies these articles recommend as “the best” are often the ones that pay them the highest commission.

So, when researching a reseller hosting partner, keep in mind that most of the articles listed in Google’s results are aimed primarily at lining the publishers’ pockets with affiliate commissions.

Pitfall #2 – Avoid Reseller Platforms That Won’t Integrate Fully with Your Business

Unless you have a burning desire to set up your own reseller hosting (and love tinkering with scripts, installing server applications, troubleshooting issues, fixing problems, and spending time reading technical documentation), we recommend choosing a company where the hosting and the tools you’ll need to run your hosting accounts and client sites is already set up, optimized, pre-installed, configured, fully managed, supported, and 100% ready to use.

This will allow you to focus more of your time, effort, and resources on growing your agency and scaling your business instead of dealing with technical issues and headaches.

Having someone take care of all the technical aspects of your hosting is great, but there’s still a business side to running a reseller business and there are a myriad of things to figure out, such as:

• Which hosting plans and packages you’ll create to sell,
• Which software and tools you’ll use to manage your hosting account and client sites,
• How to integrate client billing and management systems,
• How to provide clients with access and support,
• How to formulate profitable pricing strategies,
• How to handle various business legalities (e.g. refunds, site suspensions for non-payment, etc.),
• How to protect your client relationship,
• And so on.

Following these tips will help to eliminate many problems when running your reseller business:

• Choose a reseller hosting company with an integrated platform for seamless client management.
• Opt for automation to minimize manual tasks and maximize efficiency. This ensures a smooth client experience, fostering loyalty and long-term relationships.
• Prioritize a reseller platform that offers automation, integration, and simplicity to run a profitable business with minimal effort
• Avoid fragmented platforms, as these will be prone to issues.

So, how can you grow a profitable reseller business without all the hassles and headaches?

The Ideal Reseller Hosting Platform

Imagine having the ultimate dropshipping business where:

• Your supplier won’t charge you until a purchase is made.
• Your provider instantly delivers the product to your client.
• Everything happens through a fully branded and integrated platform.
• Your clients only interact with you, not the provider.
• You get paid instantly upon completing the sale.

Additionally, imagine owning an automatic vending machine for selling digital products like hosting, domain registrations, site templates, and other services, where customers can visit your site at any time (even at 3 am) and purchase from you without you being involved in the process (or even awake).

Can you really own a fully automated reseller business that runs under your own brand, integrates seamlessly with your business, delivers your clients top-notch products, allows you to focus on acquiring more clients … and makes you money while you sleep?

With the right reseller platform … Yes, you can!

Reseller Hosting Companies – What To Look For

Take a look at the chart below. We’ll use this as your blueprint for choosing the best reseller hosting company for your agency or web development business.

Let’s go over each of the above components to understand how these will benefit your business when fully integrated.

1. Pricing and Profitability

When working out whether a specific reseller program will help you turn a profit, it’s important to look at all the factors that can affect your profitability.

These include:

• Comparing the pricing structures of different hosting providers and analyzing the profit margins offered to resellers.
• Looking for providers that offer competitive pricing without compromising on the quality of their services.
• Finding out if you can set your own pricing on the hosting itself.

You don’t want a glorified affiliate program where all you’re really doing is referring clients to your hosting company and earning a sales commission. You want to be able to set your own pricing and sell the hosting as your own (and on its own).

With WPMU DEV Reseller, for example, you have complete freedom when it comes to pricing. You can purchase hosting (and domains too) at a deep discount, create your own plans, set your own pricing per product, sell hosting on its own under your brand, or bundle it with your services and sell your service packages with hosting included (your client’s hosting will be automatically set up when they purchase your service at the bundled price you have set).

Here are other areas to look at that will impact reseller hosting profitability:

• Explore potential discounts or incentives for resellers and consider the flexibility of providers when it comes to pricing strategies.
• Consider factors that can impact your profits if overlooked. Evaluate potential setbacks such as set-up fees, recurring costs, and additional license fees. Hosting management tools like cPanel, WHM/WHMCS, Plesk etc. charge license fees, often on a per user basis. Some companies also charge annual fees for accessing their reseller programs, while others have no cost to join, but you cannot set your own hosting prices and have to purchase add-ons like client billing or white labeling separately, adding to your costs.
• Consider how the reseller model of a particular provider will impact your cash flow when it comes to receiving your share of the sale. For example, with some reseller models you have to wait a month after a sale is made, whereas you get paid instantly with a platform like WPMU DEV Reseller.
• Make sure that the reseller agreement you enter into means that the partnership remains between you and your client. Otherwise, your supplier can take over the relationship (tip: research web hosting forums for discussions between resellers about owning their client accounts). WPMU DEV’s fully brandable Reseller platform means that your clients will never know that their sites are hosted with us, so the relationship with your clients remains yours.

2. Quality Hosting Products

It goes without saying that any products you resell to clients should be of the highest quality possible, so choose products from hosting providers with a solid award-winning reputation, a long-standing presence in the industry, and loads of positive customer reviews.

After creating a short-list of the top hosting providers, look for reseller hosting features in their product offerings that include the following:

• Server reliability and uptime guarantee: Ensure that the hosting provider offers a high uptime guarantee, as frequent downtime will negatively impact your clients’ websites, affect their user experience, and this will reflect poorly on you.
• Scalability: Consider whether your provider can accommodate your growth plans and handle increased demands as your reseller business expands.
• Additional features: Consider other features such as domain registrations, backup solutions, security measures, SSL certificates, and email services. These value-added features will greatly enhance the appeal of your hosting packages.

Consider also reaching out to other resellers or industry professionals for recommendations and check out user review sites like G2.com, Trustpilot, Reviews.io, Sitejabber, even review sections on social platforms like Facebook, and Google.

No doubt you’ll want to research WPMU DEV’s world-class web hosting, as this is the same award-winning suite of hosting products we offer to resellers.

To save you time researching different hosting options, check out how WPMU DEV hosting compares with other companies.

3. Reseller Hosting and Website Management

So, you have found an excellent and reliable hosting company with top-notch hosting services you can resell.

The next step is to look for web hosting administration tools that will allow you to easily create hosting packages to suit your business and manage your client sites quickly and effortlessly.

Since the website management process is largely controlled by the control panels used in your reseller platform, use the following questions to help you evaluate the reseller platform:

• Are the management tools simple, easy, and intuitive to use?
• Does the hosting control panel provide an “at-a-glance” dashboard that lets you quickly see and manage everything and access detailed reports, logs, settings, etc.?
• Is the reseller platform well-supported and regularly updated?
• How much input do resellers have on the platform’s development? Can they request new features and improvements?
• Can the client-facing features of the management tool be accessed from your website or do they need to log in from an external URL?

With the above in mind, let’s take a look at some of the more popular control panel applications available to WordPress hosting resellers for managing web hosting and client websites:

WHM/cPanel/WP Toolkit

WHM (WebHost Manager) and cPanel is a very popular choice for hosting resellers, especially among Linux-based hosting providers and server administrators.

WHM is a web-based administrative console. It allows server administrators and resellers to manage various aspects of web hosting, including user account creation, and server-related tasks including server configuration and server maintenance.

WHM provides a graphical interface for server administration and is often used in conjunction with cPanel to manage web hosting services and server resources for multiple websites in a centralized manner.

cPanel provides tools for server and website management, making it suitable for advanced users, and is known for its extensive features, robust performance, and large user community.

WP Toolkit is included with cPanel and is a WordPress management interface that allows you to install, configure, and manage WordPress sites, plugins, themes, and more.

As a reseller using this platform, you would manage your hosting account and configure your hosting packages using WHM, use cPanel to manage individual sites and features like email management, and file handling, and use WP Toolkit to perform WordPress management tasks within those sites.

While the pros of using WHM and cPanel include being very popular programs that are widely implemented, very flexible, and have extensive documentation, some of the drawbacks are that these can be hard to set up and configure, and require a lot more hands-on management.

Also, working with these separate applications can be a little overwhelming and confusing for beginners, and their interfaces tend to feel a little cluttered.

Additionally, WHM is dependent on cPanel, and cPanel requires paying license fees to use on a per-account and per-server basis, which can add to your running costs (many reseller hosting plans include the cost of cPanel licenses).

Plesk

Plesk is another popular control panel designed for managing web hosting and WordPress sites.

Unlike cPanel which runs on Linux, Plesk supports both Windows and Linux servers. However, like cPanel, Plesk also offers features like automated updates, security tools, and WordPress toolkit for efficient website management.

The Plesk interface resembles more that of WordPress, with all features listed within left-hand panel menus.

Like cPanel, the Plesk interface offers customizable modules, so you access those that you use more frequently from the interface’s home page without having to go through layers of menus.

Plesk also lets you view its interface differently depending on how you want to run your reseller business with two options: the Service Provider and the Power User view.

The Service Provider view is the recommended option for resellers who plan to provide shared hosting services to different customers.

Power User view suits web developers and web designers who create and manage websites for customers who won’t be logging into Plesk. It  removes the ability to manage customer accounts, service plans, and subscriptions, and includes the Tools section, which contains various tools and utilities for managing your account.

If you are just starting out on your reseller journey, you’ll need to consider the cost of using Plesk to manage your clients accounts.

To use Plesk as a reseller, you’ll need the Web Host Edition license.

As we will see later, many reseller hosting programs run on the above applications.

Open Source Control Panels

For more technical users, using open-source hosting control panels like Webmin, CyberPanel, and others with Linux servers can provide great flexibility and customization options.

The downside of choosing these applications to manage your hosting and client sites is that you will need technical expertise to combine and configure the various systems required to run your hosting reselling business.

As stated earlier, we don’t recommend this option unless you really like tinkering with the technical stuff and want to spend time reading loads of documentation to figure out how to make everything work.

Proprietary Control Panels

Here is where we start to get closer to the ultimate dropshipping and automated vending machine model described earlier that will let you run a profitable reseller business with the least amount of technical know-how and hassle involved.

Some hosting providers offer custom control panels with unique features and integrations, tailored to their hosting plans and specific services.

The key benefits to choosing proprietary control panels to manage your hosting and client sites is that these are often designed for simplicity and user-friendliness, eliminating the need to deal with technical complexities, and allowing you to invest your time and effort into focusing on servicing customers and growing your business.

Additionally, proprietary control panels can offer cost-effective alternatives for smaller reseller businesses without the high licensing fees of general control panels.

For example, WPMU DEV’s Reseller platform eliminates all of the complexities of configuring and managing reseller hosting and websites for your clients as well as the need to pay high licensing fees by combining award-winning hosting plans with a proprietary, intuitive, and user-friendly site management control panel, The Hub, via an all-inclusive and affordable Premium membership, which covers all the licensing costs you need for your reseller business and so much more.

It’s also worth noting that web developers, agencies, and WordPress users consistently rate WPMU DEV’s The Hub as a leading WordPress hosting and site management tool, so WPMU DEV offers not only hosting products of outstanding and award-winning quality, but also the tools to manage your hosting and client sites.

For more details on everything The Hub lets you easily manage in your reseller business, see The Hub documentation.

Now that we have covered the main technical areas to look for when assessing reseller hosting platforms (i.e. quality hosting and hosting management tools), let’s look at what the best platforms should include to help you manage and grow your reseller business.

4. White Label Branding and Customization

The ability to white label services allows you to establish your own brand identity in the market.

Ideally, you want to be able to white label and customize the entire reseller platform to match your unique brand and have this all be fully integrated with your business.

Unfortunately, with many reseller platform setups this isn’t possible.

For example, if you are managing your hosting account using Plesk and want to make the control dashboards available to your clients, you can brand the Plesk dashboard with your own logo and make it clickable to point to your company’s website. You can even change the page’s title so your customers see your company name or other relevant text in their browsers’ title bars when they work in the Customer Panel.

cPanel offers similar branding options, with additional links to your support and documentation pages, and the option to add your logo to webmail and create a favicon.

However, your clients will still need to log into an external URL in order to access these dashboards.

If you want your clients to experience the full benefit of your brand, your reseller hosting platform should include additional brandable components, such as an integrated white labeled client portal, accessible via your own website.

This is included in WPMU DEV’s Reseller and is the next component of your reseller platform that we’ll explore.

5. Client Portal and Automation

Unless you plan to fully manage every aspect of your client’s online presence, you will want the client-facing areas of your reseller platform to offer complete white labeling options for your brand and be fully integrated with your website.

Additionally, you will want the platform to automate as much of the client administration as possible so you can scale your business and grow your client base.

Ideally, your platform would also automate various sales processes so clients could choose to upgrade services within their client portal without requiring your assistance. This increases your revenue with no additional effort on your part.

As discussed earlier, if your reseller platform is comprised of a mashup of third-party components where your clients have to log into a different URL than your website to access their information, this will present a challenge as it can lead to an inconsistent user experience.

With a white-label platform like WPMU DEV’s Reseller and The Hub Client plugin, you can create a fully branded professional client portal that your clients can access from your own domain without ever leaving your website.

Additionally, The Hub Client includes built-in automation that puts more money into your pocket, like site templates, domain registrations, and more.

Speaking of automation and putting money into your pocket, let’s now turn to the component of your reseller platform that will ensure you get paid for your services.

6. Client Billing, Invoicing, and Management

So far, we’ve covered all of the technical components you need for your reseller platform… white label hosting, hosting management, and client portal.

The next step is to figure out how to get paid for supplying your clients with your reseller products and services.

Remember, being a reseller involves:

1. Buying products and services from your supplier,
2. Marking up your cost price to resell these for a profit,
3. Allowing clients to make one-time and/or subscription purchases,
4. Setting up invoicing and/or automatic payments,
5. Managing the entire client payment process, including the creation of accounts, suspension of unpaid invoices, subscription cancellations, report generation, etc.

All of these processes can and should be fully automated, including purchasing products at cost price from the supplier only when and if a sale is made and having the markup difference after the sale (i.e. your profit) be automatically transferred to your business and deposited into your bank account.

There are many software packages and solutions available that you can use to set up client billing, invoicing, and management for your reseller business, so let’s focus on just two examples: one for a reseller platform built using separate components, and the other, an integrated reseller client billing solution.

WHMCS

If your reseller platform is built using separate components like WHM, cPanel (or Plesk), WPToolkit, etc., you may want to consider using WHMCS (Web Host Manager Complete Solution).

WHMCS is a web hosting management and billing software script that includes features designed to automate various aspects of a web hosting reseller business, such as:

• Billing and Invoicing: Automates billing processes, setting up taxes, generating invoices, and managing payment collections.
• Provisioning: Facilitates the setup of hosting packages, domain registration, and management.
• Automation: Automate workflow tasks related to the creation, suspension, and termination of hosting accounts.
• Customer Management: Manage customer accounts, support tickets, and client communication.

While WHMCS is the most widely adopted billing automation solution for hosting providers, there are some cons, such as:

• Adding custom branding requires editing server files
• Having to purchase hosting from your supplier independently of selling hosting and collecting client payments.
• Paying software licensing fees (plus optional installation, configuration, and integration fees to ensure a smooth setup), which can make this a costly option for small reseller businesses.

WPMU DEV Clients & Billing

A solution like WPMU DEV’s Automated Clients & Billing offers you everything that a solution like WHMCS offers with additional advantages, such as:

• Integrated client and billing platform: With Clients & Billing, there’s no need to set up a separate component to handle billing management. Clients & Billing lets you manage all aspects of your billing process with Stripe, right from your Hub or Hub Client plugin installed on your own site.
• Sell all products and services: WPMU DEV’s Clients & Billing portal is not limited just to reseller products. You can create and sell any kind of product or service packages to your clients.
• Save on fees: Clients & Billing is included for free with a WPMU DEV membership. Even better, members on a Plus or Premium plan incur 0% transaction fees, and so pay no fees whatsoever.

The video below provides an overview of WPMU DEV’s Clients & Billing platform:

7. Expert 24/7 Support for Resellers and Their Clients

Running a fully branded reseller business means that if your clients only deal with you, the buck also stops with you, and you will be blamed if anything goes wrong.

It’s really important to know, then, that the company you choose to partner with will always and immediately be there to support you at all times, especially if there’s an issue with your clients.

You need excellent reseller and technical support for your business and your clients will need excellent hosting and technical support for their businesses.

When evaluating the hosting support you can expect to receive as a reseller, it’s important to consider the following areas:

• Proactive Customer Support: Does the support team anticipate potential challenges and address these before they become issues? Tip: Check real customer reviews for unbiased information in this area (see the list of review sites provided earlier).
• 24/7 Availability: Is customer support available 24/7 to ensure assistance is accessible when needed?
• Multi-Channel Support: Is personalized support for resellers offered through various channels, e.g. live chat, email, phone?
• Chatbots for Quick Responses: Does support enhance responsiveness and efficiency with chatbots for quick responses to common queries?
• Community Forums: Are there established community forums where resellers can connect, share experiences, and seek advice from peers?
• Expert Technical Support: Is expert technical support available to resellers for help with complex issues?
• Self-Help Resources: Are there informative blog posts, how-to guides and tutorials, documentation, videos, etc. to empower resellers with self-service options?
• Regular Updates and Communication: Are resellers kept informed of industry trends, best practices, system changes, maintenance schedules, and new features through regular updates and clear communication?

Again, it’s worth noting that WPMU DEV’s support is rated by thousands of fanatical members as one of the best available in the WordPress ecosystem, providing 24/7 expert technical assistance for resellers for all web hosting and WordPress-related issues by a live team of trained staff all around the world via live chat, member support forums, email, and an AI-powered assistant specifically trained on our comprehensive documentation.

In terms of providing support to your clients, WPMU DEV also has you covered, with tools like integrated video tutorials and our soon to be launched white label reseller client support (coming real soon!)

8. Additional Reseller Features

Everything we’ve discussed so far should be included and be able to be fully integrated with your business.

However, don’t just stop there.

You are looking for a long-term partner you can trust and rely on to grow your reseller business, so find out what else is included in their reseller program.

For example:

• Does the reseller platform include an exclusive IP address for each hosting account?
• Can you also integrate domain reselling into your platform?
• What about emails, customized website templates, white label premium plugins, and branded reports?

Can you also combine reseller products with your own products and services to create unique packages and bundles for your clients? Or set up different subscription plans to give your clients easier options to purchase from you?

Check their roadmap to see what new features or products are in the pipeline for resellers, and how responsive and open they are to receiving requests for new features and improvements from their members and resellers.

Best Hosting Reseller Programs

Now that you know what to look for in a hosting reseller platform, let’s look at some of the more popular hosting reseller companies and their programs.

WPMU DEV Reseller

WPMU DEV’s Reseller provides the ideal reseller platform for any digital agency or web development business and includes:

• World-class dedicated hosting plans capable of handling sites of any size and purpose, from micro businesses to large enterprises
• Award-winning hosting and site management tools
• White label customization and branding
• Client portal with admin/sales automation that runs on your own domain
• Integrated client billing, invoicing, and management,
• Expert 24/7 support for resellers (and reseller clients too…coming soon!)

WPMU DEV’s fully integrated reseller platform not only blends seamlessly with your brand, but it also provides a simple and unbeatable pricing model that is guaranteed to boost the profitability of your reseller business.

A reseller license is included at no additional cost with a Premium membership plan. This automatically gives you a 50% discount on all hosting plans, plus additional annual hosting credits which you can apply to any hosting plan (e.g. you can set up 3 x Quantum sites at no cost).

Premium members also benefit from a range of additional inclusions, such as wholesale domain pricing, a suite of premium plugins, directory listing, and a whole lot more.

As a WPMU DEV reseller, you can set your own pricing and create packages from a wide range of discounted hosting plans (10GB – 1,600GB+), starting from as low as $4 p/mo.

When you make a hosting sale, the full amount of your client’s payment is credited to your Stripe account. The payment method you have set in your profile is then charged for the hosted site, just as if you had created it yourself in your own WPMU DEV account.

So, there’s no waiting a month or so to get paid … just set up your payouts on Stripe and you’re done!

To learn about all that WPMU DEV’s Reseller offers your agency or web development business, check out our extensive documentation.

GoDaddy Reseller

The GoDaddy Reseller program is another very popular reseller hosting program.

GoDaddy’s Reseller program includes a range of nice features like a website builder, a family of integrated tools that lets you sell domains, hosting, SSL certificates, etc. and manage your customers’ websites and clients from one dashboard, a brandable storefront, and dedicated teams to support your customers 24/7 by phone or email (and even try to close the sale for you).

However, there are some things to be aware of.

For example, there is a cost to join.

GoDaddy offers two reseller programs: Basic Reseller (for up to 25 customers, starting at $107.88/yr) and Pro Reseller (for unlimited customers, starting at $179.88 /yr). There is no option to pay monthly.

While both programs include a white-label eCommerce storefront, credit card processing, 24/7 support, free GoDaddy software for email marketing, and sales and commission reports, they both charge resellers standard buy rates with Basic Reseller offering up to 20% off the retail price, while the Pro plan offers up to 40% off retail pricing.

Note that site management tools are only included with the Pro Reseller plan.

In terms of customization, there’s not much available when it comes to WordPress hosting reselling plans. All hosting plans are based on shared — not dedicated — hosting, so you’ll have no control over the number of customers sharing your server resources.

You can add a markup on top of GoDaddy’s prices (either globally or set a price per product), but you can’t create custom products or combine other services to create a unique package tailored to the needs of your business (and unlike WPMU DEV’s Reseller, GoDaddy customers don’t get premium plugins included with their hosting).

Additionally, reseller storefronts are hosted by default on a GoDaddy URL (secureserver.net). While you can set up your storefront to point to a subdomain on your existing website, GoDaddy limits this feature to certain pages of your storefront for security purposes, so when customers enter secure areas of your storefront, the default URL will display instead of your custom domain.

Finally, keep in mind that payments are handled through GoDaddy’s own payment system and resellers have to wait a month to get paid sales commissions (for example, the commission you earned during December will be paid out at the end of January).

SiteGround

SiteGround provides 3 reseller hosting plans ranging from 20GB to 40GB+ disk space, starting from $4.99/month (first invoice only with prepaid purchases of a 12-month hosting plan).

SiteGround’s hosting is built on Google Cloud servers and the management of your hosting account and client sites is done using SiteGround’s custom-built tools, Site Tools and Client Area.

A chat with their sales team confirmed that SiteGround currently does not have an option for billing or an alternative to WHMCS, so as a reseller, you would manage your client websites from the main user area but handle the billing manually from your end.

Note that for white label hosting, you will need to opt for their GoGeek plan at $7.99/month, or Cloud plan, starting from $100/month. Configurable hosting packages are only available with the Cloud plan.

Hostinger

To resell hosting from Hostinger, you will need to sign up for their partner program and manage your hosting account and client sites through their custom tools Pro Panel (for managing hosting and clients) and hPanel (a scaled-down version of cPanel for managing client sites).

With Hostinger’s reseller hosting you can sell shared, cloud, or VPS hosting, but you cannot set your own hosting prices, as it operates on a commission-based model, so the pricing structure of your reseller hosting plans is fixed and pays you a 20% commission for first-time purchases and 10% commission for user upgrades, renewals, or purchases of different plans.

Hostinger’s reseller setup is also not as integrated as WPMU DEV’s fully white-labeled platform where your client perceives to be only dealing with you.

With Hostinger’s reseller setup, if you’ve marked up the hosting and bundled it with your services, you will have to make purchases on behalf of your client, or you can send a cart of the reseller hosting plan directly to your client’s email for them to complete the payment, but your client will then purchase hosting at the price advertised on Hostinger’s website.

InstaWP

The InstaWP reseller model is based on setting up WordPress sites for clients using a template and then migrating the sites to one of their hosting partners or to any other hosting provider.

Their full Website As A Service (WaaS) offering is still in beta. It currently allows you to create templates and sell them at your own price.

However, InstaWP doesn’t have their own hosting, so their reseller model is commission based depending on which of their hosting partners you purchase from. They will take a percentage of the sale and pay you your commission at the end of the month.

WPUltimo

WP Ultimo is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create a WordPress multisite network and offer a white-label, multi-website hosting solution to your clients.

The WP Ultimo reseller model enables web developers to become hosting providers and offer website creation, hosting, and domain reseller services to their clients by emulating self-managed Website as a Service (WaaS) platforms on WordPress similar to Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.com.

While WP Ultimo is a versatile solution for WaaS, it runs on WordPress Multisite (unlike WPMU DEV’s single-site solution, where every site is built and hosted on its own dedicated virtual server and individual IP), which is harder to manage (as one of the largest multisite hosts on the planet, we know the challenges of managing sites on this platform).

Other Reseller Programs

The following are some popular hosting companies that offer reseller hosting programs with pre-installed management software like cPanel, Plesk, WHM, WHMCS, etc. They don’t include components like premium plugins or a client portal like our white labeled Hub.

Note: Prices shown below may reflect promotional/discount pricing and vary from the actual prices charged by the hosting companies on their website.

InMotion

InMotion reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 4 reseller plans (80GB SSD – 300GB NVMe SSD)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: WHMCS
• Starting Price: $6.99/month

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 4 reseller plans (60GB SSD/NVMe SSD – 250GB SSD/NVMe SSD)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: WHMCS or Blesta
• Starting Price: $15.99/month.

HostGator

HostGator reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 3 reseller plans (60GB – 140GB)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: WHMCS
• Starting Price: $19.95/month (first month only)

InterServer

InterServer reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 5 reseller plans (80GB – 280GB)
• Hosting Management: DirectAdmin
• Client Billing: Install via a script (e.g. WHMCS, Blesta, HostBill, etc.)
• Starting Price: $19.95/month

AccuWeb

AccuWeb reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: various plans (10GB – 200GB)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: Not included. You will need to set up your own.
• Starting Price: $11.99/month (with annual purchase)

Hostwinds

Hostwinds reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 3 shared hosting reseller plans (unlimited space)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: Not included with Reseller
• Starting Price: $5.24/month (first billing cycle only, then $6.99/mo)

ResellerClub

ResellerClub reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 4 reseller plans (40GB – 200GB)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: can purchase WHMCS as an add-on
• Starting Price: $16.99/month (with 3-year purchase, otherwise $23.99/mo)

HostPapa

HostPapa reseller features include:

• Hosting Products: 5 reseller plans (50GB – 250GB)
• Hosting Management: cPanel/WHM
• Client Billing: WHMCS included for up to 250 clients.
• Starting Price: $30.99/month

Grow Your Reseller Business, Not Your Headaches

Hopefully, this comprehensive guide has given you all the information you need to find the ideal reseller hosting company and platform for your WordPress and web services agency or web development business to partner with for long-term success.

We’ve covered the pitfalls to avoid, looked at everything the ideal reseller hosting platform should provide you with, and even included a list of the top reseller hosting companies you can check out to save time with your research.

If you agree that the ideal reseller hosting platform for your business should comprise the following:

1. Provide a fully managed hosting service so you don’t waste time worrying about the technical issues of hosting and managing servers,
2. Be seamlessly integrated with your agency or web development business so it runs completely under your own brand on your domain,
3. Include everything from superior-quality web hosting plans where you can set your own pricing and easy hosting and site management tools to client billing and invoicing, a white label branded client portal, 24×7 expert support for resellers and their clients, and other additional services you can resell (e.g. domains),
4. Offer you the customization, automation, flexibility, and scalability you need to grow your business with no hassles or headaches, and
5. Provide you with maximum profit potential (e.g. ability to buy services at deeply discounted or even wholesale prices and mark these up without restrictions),

Then we guarantee you won’t find a better reseller hosting solution to partner with than WPMU DEV’s Reseller.

WPMU DEV Reseller is the culmination of years of effort by a global team comprised of hundreds of dedicated staff members, all united by a single common purpose: to develop and support the best all-in-one fully integrated, automated, white-label WordPress platform available anywhere that agencies and web developers can resell as their own to grow and scale their business to unlimited heights.

Take our reseller platform for a 30-day risk free test drive, do your due diligence, and see for yourself why we are not just tooting our own horn.

Running a profitable reseller hosting business can be challenging and filled with headaches and complications, but with WPMU DEV’s Reseller, it doesn’t have to be.

Integrate reseller hosting with your business today.

If you run your own web development business or digital agency or plan to start one  (tip: see our guide on launching a successful web development business), you may want to think about ways to generate recurring revenue from your existing client base.

One great way to generate regular income for your business is to offer clients website care and maintenance services. Another is reseller hosting.

Reseller hosting can be confusing for some. This guide will help to eliminate any confusion. We’ll cover what reseller hosting is, how it works, and the best, easiest, and fastest way to get started.

Here are all the areas we’ll be covering:

• Why Resell Hosting?
• What is Reseller Hosting?
• Reseller vs Affiliate – Differences Explained
• Different Types of Reseller Hosting
• Reseller Basics – Benefits of Reselling Web Hosting
• How Reseller Hosting Works
• Reseller Hosting Pricing Models
• Who Should Consider Reseller Hosting
• What You Need To Succeed as a Reseller
• WPMU DEV – The Ideal Reseller Platform For Your Business

Let’s get right into it…

Why Resell Hosting?

With more businesses going online to expand their reach and remain competitive in the global digital economy, the demand for websites just keeps increasing.

According to G2.com, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace, the web hosting industry has consistently outperformed analysts’ predictions for annual growth and revenue.

If your services involve building websites for clients, a major part of your business will be setting up and configuring web hosting and domains, so … why not have them buy from you?

What is Reseller Hosting?

Setting up and running web hosting and domain registration services is complex and astronomically expensive. In fact, it’s an impractical undertaking, even for large agencies.

Setting up and providing a web hosting service, for example, requires owning and operating the servers and infrastructure required to host websites. It also involves providing storage space, server resources, and network connectivity to ensure websites remain accessible 24/7.

And becoming a domain registrar requires going through accreditation processes and proving your technical readiness to perform all the necessary administration and compliance processes associated with registering domain names and following accurate and secure protocols.

To maximize your profitability and minimize your risks and expenses, the smarter, cheaper, and easier way is to use external hosting providers and domain registrars for their secure infrastructure, maintenance, and administration systems, so you can focus on growing your web development services business.

Reseller hosting (and domain reselling) are unique services that can empower you to offer web hosting solutions (and domain registration/renewals) to your clients and share in the profit.

Instead of managing your own servers, becoming a reseller allows you to purchase server resources in bulk from a hosting provider and then redistribute (i.e. resell) these to your own clients.

This not only allows you to provide a comprehensive solution encompassing website development and hosting services, but it also gives you the opportunity to create recurring income.

As a web developer or digital agency, then, you can earn money from hosting and domain names by referring clients to web hosts and domain name registrars by becoming either an affiliate or a reseller of their services.

Reseller vs Affiliate – Differences Explained

An affiliate is essentially someone who introduces customers to a business via their website, email, banner ad, etc., using a special link encoded with a unique trackable affiliate ID. If a sale occurs, they receive a commission after a certain amount of time has elapsed (to cover money-back guarantee periods, processing of payment accounts, etc.)

A reseller, on the other hand, can integrate the hosting provider’s product or service into their business, add a markup to the customer’s cost of purchasing these products or services, and have more control over areas like pricing and profit margins, product naming, payment terms, etc.,

Also, depending on the type of reseller hosting, you can resell another company’s services under your own brand name and on your own website.

Different Types of Reseller Hosting

Now that you understand the basic difference between earning a sales commission by referring someone to a hosting company (affiliate) and reselling their hosting, let’s take a brief look at the different types of reseller hosting available:

1. Traditional Reseller Hosting

With traditional reseller hosting, you buy a chunk of server space and allocate it to your clients. Even if you sell it under your brand, your clients can generally tell that you are the middle agent in the deal.

2. White Label Reseller Hosting

With white label reseller hosting, you can rebadge and sell the hosting service as your own without revealing the original hosting provider to your clients.

3. Cloud Reseller Hosting

Cloud reseller hosting lets you resell hosting on cloud infrastructure with flexibility and scalability.

4. VPS Reseller Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) reseller hosting lets you provide clients with services with dedicated resources for enhanced performance and control.

5. Shared Reseller Hosting

Resell shared hosting plans with multiple users on the same server.

Note: While this type of reseller hosting allows you to offer cost-effective hosting solutions for small websites, we don’t recommend it, as there are potentially inherent risks that you have no control over.

For example, if another site being hosted on your shared server cause the server to go down, all sites on that server will also be affected.

If you are considering shared reseller hosting for cost reasons, a better option would be to offer your clients inexpensive hosting on WPMU DEV’s Quantum plans, which provide more benefits to small websites, including compartmentalized hosting with their own dedicated IP address.

Now that you understand what reseller hosting is and the different types of reseller hosting available, let’s look at the benefits of becoming a reseller.

Reseller Basics – Benefits of Reselling Web Hosting and Domains

Choosing to resell web hosting and domains rather than starting your own hosting company or setting up a domain registrar business from scratch offers several advantages to web developers and digital service agencies:

• Low Startup Costs: Reselling allows you to enter the web hosting and domain market with minimal to no upfront investment. Instead of building and maintaining your own infrastructure, you simply leverage an established hosting and domain provider’s resources and focus on improving your own sales and customer service processes.
• Time Efficiency: As discussed earlier, setting up a hosting company or domain registrar from scratch requires significant time and technical expertise. By becoming a reseller, you can bypass the complex setup process and focus entirely on developing your services and growing your business.
• Technical Support and Maintenance: When you join a reseller program, you gain access to technical support and maintenance services provided by the hosting provider. This relieves you of the burden of managing web hosting servers, infrastructure, and software updates and having to perform all necessary domain registration admin and compliance tasks, allowing you to focus all of your time, efforts, and resources on servicing your clients.
• Established Reputation: If you decide not to whitelabel the services and market these under your own brand, then partnering with a reputable hosting provider means you can leverage their brand reputation and reliability. This can help to instill trust and confidence in your potential customers and help you attract new clients more easily.

How Reseller Hosting Works

A reseller hosting provider acts as the middle agent between companies that own and manage the hosting technology and users looking for reliable hosting for their businesses and websites.

The key role of a hosting reseller is to provide users with access to the following:

• Server Management – Interfacing with the hosting providers that own and manage the servers, hardware, and data centers so users don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of server maintenance, security, and uptime.
• Technical Support – Providing users with technical support when they encounter problems with their hosting services, ensuring that any server-related issues are resolved quickly.
• Scalability – Offering users scalable solutions to easily accommodate their growing needs. This includes helping users upgrade resources like disk space, bandwidth, and RAM as their client base expands.

As a web developer, you can significantly boost your business and revenue by partnering with a reseller hosting provider that allows you to focus exclusively on your core expertise and your clients. This is done by having access to solutions that take care of everything else you need to run your business.

Let’s look at these main solutions:

Server Infrastructure and Resource Allocation

Understanding server infrastructure and resource allocation is vitally important because it affects the performance of the websites you host.

You will want to make sure that the hosting is right for your clients’ requirements and budget and provides access to sufficient server resources like CPU, RAM, and bandwidth to prevent overloading servers and ensure smooth website performance.

Another factor to consider is data center locations, as the physical location and quality of the data centers used by the hosting provider impact website speed and reliability.

White-Labeling and Branding Options

Having access to white-labeling and branding options allows you to create a consistent and professional online presence for your clients.

As a hosting reseller, you will want to rebrand the hosting services under your own company name to maintain a cohesive brand identity.

Another key factor in this area is the ability to create custom hosting plans that align with your brand’s aesthetics and services. This flexibility will enable you to provide a more tailored hosting experience for your clients.

White-labeling and branding options also give you a marketing advantage and a competitive edge by allowing you to present hosting services as your own, enhancing your credibility and trustworthiness with clients.

Billing and Customer Management

Efficient billing and customer management are critical aspects of a web developer’s business, so look for reseller hosting that offers the following:

• Billing Automation: Billing automation tools streamline the process of invoicing and payment collection. This reduces your administrative overhead.
• Client Onboarding: Look for platforms that allow you to effectively manage client accounts, making it easier to onboard new clients, set up hosting packages, and assign resources.
• Monitoring and Reporting: Having access to tools that allow you to monitor server performance and generate reports helps you keep track of your clients’ hosting usage and identify opportunities for improvement.

In summary, understanding your role in providing reliable hosting services to clients as a reseller hosting provider will allow you to focus on your core expertise in web development, build a successful hosting business, and offer comprehensive solutions to your clients.

Reseller Hosting Pricing Models

Understanding different reseller pricing models is the key to effectively pricing your products or services to align with market demands and maximize your profit potential.

Here are the main reseller pricing models and some basic examples of how to calculate your pricing using these models:

Cost-Based Pricing

Calculate all costs including server expenses, support, and overheads. Add a suitable markup for profitability.

Example: Server costs $100/month + Support costs $50/month. Markup of 30%. Total pricing: $100 + $50 + ($150 * 0.3) = $225.

Percentage-Based Pricing

Set prices based on a percentage of the hosting service cost.

Example: For a 25% profit on a $50 hosting plan, reseller price is $50 + ($50 * 0.25) = $62.50.

Tiered Pricing

Create different service tiers with varying features and prices and let your clients choose based on their needs.

Example: Basic tier at $20/month with limited features, Standard tier at $40/month with more features, Premium tier at $60/month with all features.

Competitive Pricing

Analyze market rates and set prices to compete. This may involve offering additional services or lower prices.

Example: Market average for reseller hosting is $30/month. Set pricing at $25/month with additional support to be competitive.

Bundle Pricing

Combine hosting with other services (e.g., domain, security) into a package for a single price.

Example: Basic bundle includes hosting and domain for $50/month. Premium bundle includes hosting, domain, and security for $75/month.

Who Should Consider Reseller Hosting

In addition to the general benefits discussed earlier, reseller hosting provides benefits and opportunities to businesses such as:

Web Developers and Web Designers

Including web hosting as part of your packages lets you expand your service offerings and create a one-stop-shop for your clients.

For example, you can target specific niches or industries and offer clients a comprehensive package that includes website development, hosting, and maintenance, providing expertise and reliability, and ensuring ongoing revenue from hosting fees.

By reselling hosting services to clients as a bundled offering, you can establish a steady stream of passive income to complement project-based earnings.

Agencies and Freelancers

As an agency or freelancer, you can easily scale your hosting infrastructure to accommodate the needs of multiple clients without the hassle of managing physical servers by branding and reselling hosting services as your own, diversify revenue streams by offering hosting alongside design, marketing, or development services, and centralize the management of your client accounts to simplify billing, support, and maintenance.

Also, as a reseller you will be accessing bulk discounts, enabling your business to offer competitive pricing while maintaining healthy profit margins.

Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, and Anyone Seeking Income Generation

While leveraging existing skills, resources, and client networks certainly makes it easier to build a profitable reseller hosting business, the opportunity is not confined only to web developers, designers, agencies, or freelancers.

The growing web hosting industry also provides a stable and expanding market for entrepreneurial and business-minded individuals seeking income generation opportunities.

Reseller hosting requires minimal upfront investment and allows you to generate a steady stream of passive income without the need for extensive technical knowledge.

The recommended approach here would be to identify underserved niches or industries and provide specialized hosting services tailored to their needs, such as providing hosting for small firms or local businesses in that niche.

You could even explore strategies like adding an affiliate program and recruiting affiliates to refer clients to your services.

What You Need to Succeed As a Reseller

While you don’t need advanced technical skills to start a web hosting and domain reselling business, having a basic understanding of web hosting, domains, and internet technologies can be beneficial.

If you currently offer (or are planning to start) a web development services business, your business structure should be able to quickly and easily accommodate the provision of these additional services.

A great way to start is to choose a reputable hosting and domain provider offering a great reseller program and a platform that meets your infrastructure, pricing, features, and support needs.

WPMU DEV – The Ideal Reseller Platform or Your Business

Choosing the right hosting and domain provider is crucial for the success of your reselling activities, so it’s important to research your options.

As a leader in the managed WordPress web hosting space, WPMU DEV has developed a solid, well-supported, and fully automated whitelabel reseller platform that provides you with an instant revenue add-on where you can resell hosting and domains under your own brand for maximum profit, with little effort.

Here are some of the great reasons to partner with WPMU DEV to resell web hosting and domains:

1. Our All-In-One WordPress Platform Provides Everything You Need

At WPMU DEV, our focus is to help WordPress web developers grow their business successfully.

We provide a seamlessly integrated end-to-end platform you can use to build, launch, and grow your web development business.

The platform provides everything you need under one roof:

• Blazing-fast hosting – resell the best hosting available, with all the hosting features your clients need, and additional services included, such as downtime monitoring, broken link checking, CDN, emails, and more.
• The Hub – manage unlimited sites from one central dashboard and provide your clients access to their accounts with a fully-branded client portal,
• Award-winning premium plugins – provide everything your client sites need, from hardening security, improving performance, and performing automatic backups, to marketing, SEO, analytics, and more,
• Integrated client billing and management – a streamlined payment system for your business that lets you manage and bill your clients.
• Templates – offer your clients a huge selection of professionally designed and fully optimized time-saving templates that will greatly speed up their site-building process,
• Automation – keep all your clients’ sites updated, backed up, and error-free, and send them customized reports…all done automatically for you!
• And much more.

2. Award-Winning Fully Managed WordPress Web Hosting

If you’re going to resell hosting to your clients, why not give them the very best hosting available?

G2.com, a leading company for trusted real user software reviews, consistently rates WPMU DEV a leader in the web hosting and managed WordPress hosting space.

Every WPMU DEV hosting plan you resell comes with enterprise-grade hosting features already preconfigured and fine tuned for optimum performance and speed, plus options you can turn on or off to create upsell packages.

There are simply way too many great features to list here, so check out how we compare with other hosting companies.

3. Time-Saving Automation Everywhere

Imagine owning an automated vending machine that never needs restocking of products or servicing. A vending machine that can be fully set up and configured in a few clicks to deliver your clients the highest quality hosting available, fully optimized, fully managed and fully supported for you.

Let’s take this automation up a notch.

Imagine having the option to automatically set up and configure every website hosted on your own fully-branded reseller account for optimal speed, performance, security, SEO, backups, updates, downtime monitoring, emails, client reports, and client billing and invoicing.

You don’t even have to imagine this. It’s already baked into our platform and ready to go.

But WPMU DEV pushes automation even beyond hosting, website, and client billing setup.

With Reseller, you can also instantly connect purchased domains with their websites (and have their DNS records be automatically configured without having to lift a finger), and provide your clients (and their clients) with access to white-labeled support [coming soon].

Yes, with WPMU DEV Reseller, you truly can have a fully digital automated vending machine working 24/7 for you.

4. Highest Profit Margins Anywhere

Have you ever looked into how Costco, the giant wholesale company makes its money? They sell their products to members with very low profit margins and make money from the renewal of yearly membership subscriptions from their loyal customer base.

WPMU DEV operates on a very similar model. We offer our members hosting and domains almost at cost price and we let you set your own pricing on top so you can make the maximum profits as a reseller of our products.

Additionally, we charge resellers zero client billing administration fees, so you keep all of your client’s payments after the payment processor’s charges (e.g. Stripe).

5. 24/7 Expert Support That Will Never Let You Down

As mentioned earlier, trusted product review sites like G2.com consistently rate WPMU DEV as a leader in the web hosting and managed WordPress hosting space.

While we are chuffed to be recognized for our hosting and site management tool, the area where we absolutely shine above all other industry competitors is in our commitment to provide every customer with 24/7 expert support that goes above and beyond expectations.

Don’t take our word for it…check the user reviews at G2, Trustpilot, and other review sites.

As a WPMU DEV reseller, you’re not only reselling our products but our reputation, so it’s vitally important that we provide you the very best of support and help in all areas of growing your reseller business.

From onboarding you as a member to supporting your business 24/7, we employ a range of support methods, including live chat access to a global team of WordPress and hosting experts, custom-trained AI assistant, detailed product documentation, in-depth blog articles and tutorials, an active member community forum, and more.

Soon, we’ll be extending our best-in-class support to Reseller clients too! (Coming soon)

The Next Step: Set Up Your Reseller Hosting Business

As stated earlier, the web hosting industry is growing and reseller hosting presents a lucrative opportunity for a wide range of individuals and businesses looking to tap into this ever-expanding industry.

Whether you choose to bundle web hosting with your web development or design services, scale hosting operations for multiple clients, or enter the digital services industry as a side venture, reseller hosting offers a gateway to sustainable income and business growth.

If you need help choosing a hosting company to partner with to start your reseller hosting business, check out our comprehensive guide on how to find the best reseller hosting for your WordPress business or digital agency. It covers eight major areas to look for in a reseller hosting company that will guarantee the best fit for your agency’s needs and long-term success as a reseller.

If you are ready to start generating recurring revenue with reseller hosting, WPMU DEV’s Reseller platform provides everything you need to succeed and boost your revenue with the least amount of effort and hassle involved.

This includes:

• Award-winning discounted hosting services (and domain registrations too!)
• End-to-end white label reselling
• Automated client billing and invoice management
• Pre-configured and optimized site templates
• Integrated site management and client portal
• Expert 24/7 support (for your clients too… coming soon!)
• And a whole lot more!

To get started immediately with Reseller, refer to our guide on how to set up your hosting reseller business.

Or, visit our Reseller page and go through our Reseller documentation to learn about all of the platform’s features and benefits.

If you provide web development, web design, or digital marketing, white labeling and reselling services like web hosting, templates, and domains is a great way to add additional and automated recurring revenue streams to your business quickly and easily.

WPMU DEV’s Reseller platform provides end-to-end automated white label deployment and billing for reselling services and is exclusive to Premium members.

Not a WPMU DEV Premium member? Learn more about our most exclusive, priority access plan here.

In this quick-start guide we’ll take you step-by-step through the process of setting up Reseller in your Premium account inside your central WordPress site management tool, The Hub.

Watch the video below for a quick overview and use the jump links for step-by-step instructions on setting up Reseller.

You will learn:

• How To Get Started with Reseller
• Setting Up Your Reseller Account
  • Step 1) Set Up Client Billing and Invoicing
  • Step 2) Create Your Reseller Products
  • Step 3) Set Up Your White Label Client Portal
  • Step 4) Integrate Reseller with Your Site
• Your Clients’ Onboarding Experience With Reseller

Getting Started with Reseller

Reselling and white labeling WPMU DEV hosting has been possible for a while now.

Reseller provides agencies and WordPress professionals with a complete suite of tools to generate recurring revenue without managing servers, dealing with downtime and other technical issues, or having to manually onboard customers.

Reseller also brings all the moving parts below seamlessly together to create an effortless and fully-automated reseller experience:

• White label client billing, invoicing, and management
• Reseller products, including hosting, domains, site templates, premium plugins, etc.
• White label client portal
• White label client reports
• White label client support (coming soon!)

Additionally, you can add your own products and services to the mix like SEO, PPC, and more, giving you unlimited flexibility.

Simply set up Reseller to suit your business model and brand it all as your own. WPMU DEV’s all-in-one platform will run, maintain, and support everything, leaving you free to grow your business and focus exclusively on your clients.

Setting Up Your Reseller Account

Before we go through the Reseller setup process, make sure you have a Stripe account set up.

Stripe is the default payment processor for our integrated Clients & Billing client management tool and you will need this to invoice your clients and get paid.

Got your Stripe account? Great! Then log into The Hub and click on the Reseller tab in the top menu.

We recommend watching the “get started” video and following the checklist for the fastest and easiest way to set up Reseller.

There are four main steps involved in setting up Reseller, so let’s go through these now:

Step 1) Set Up Client Billing and Invoicing

The Hub’s Client Billing and Management portal is an incredibly easy-to-use, built-in billing management platform that lets you create and sell product and service packages to your clients, process payments, set up custom plans, recurring subscriptions, branded invoices, and invite clients directly from your Hub or Hub Client plugin installed on your own site.

Setting up Clients & Billing involves two steps:

1. Connect your Stripe account to Clients & Billing.
2. Configure Clients & Billing to set up your business profile and preferences (e.g. billing currency) and add your own branding to everything, including your emails, invoices, etc.

If you need help with this step, click on the links above and follow our tutorials or refer to the Clients & Billing documentation for more detailed information.

Step 2) Create Your Reseller Products

Once you’ve decided what packages to offer (we give you a ton of different options for add-ons, services, and upgrades) and Client Billing has been set up and configured, the next step is to create and add the products and services you plan to resell to your clients.

This is as simple as adding new products, creating your plans (which connect to our hosting plans), and setting their pricing.

Click on the Reseller tab in The Hub’s main menu and you will see additional tabs inside this screen that allow you to create white label reseller hosting products, and domain reseller.

Additionally, in this section you will find a global settings tab, and links to reporting issues and suggestions and the Reseller Setup Guide.

Let’s go through an example and create a hosting reseller product using Reseller’s product setup wizard so you can see how easy this is.

Click on the Hosting Reseller tab and then click on Add New Product to bring up the first screen of the Product Setup wizard.

Product Setup

The product info you enter here (i.e. product name, image, description, and features list) will be added to the pricing table made visible to your clients, so it’s important to fill this in correctly.

Enter your product info and click ‘Next’ to continue.

Reseller Configurations

Next, configure your product by selecting the hosting plan you will resell as your own.

Note: With each product that you create, you can also specify additional customization options.

These include:

WordPress User Role

Select the user role you would like to assign to clients when this product is purchased.

Reseller lets you choose from various roles, including Super Admin (for managing Multisite site templates). This is useful if you don’t want users to have complete control of all WordPress functions on their newly purchased site.

So, if you want to restrict users from being able to install plugins and themes on their site, for example, you can associate a hosting plan with the role of Editor or a role with even less permissions (e.g. Author, Contributor, Subscriber).

Client Role

You can choose to keep the default client role as set in The Hub > Reseller > Settings or change the client role after the product has been purchased.

Note: Client Role is different from the WordPress User Role set above and affects access to features in The Hub.

Learn more about Client Roles.

Site Templates

Under the Site Templates setting, you have the option of allowing clients to choose a site template, forcing a selected template on new sites, or disabling templates.

If template-based options are selected, you can then choose to use your own client site template(s), and/or any of the pre-configured site templates from our library.

Reseller Tip: Site templates allow you to sell fully white-labeled websites to your clients. To do this, simply create custom templates from one or more white-labeled sites in your account (Hub > Site Templates > Create Template), then make only those templates available to your clients.

Learn more about site template options.

Auto Suspension

With Reseller, you’ll never lose sleep over unpaid client invoices!

Reseller lets you configure whether or not to automatically suspend sites if an invoice has not been paid after a specified number of days. You can also disable the option altogether, and specify whether or not to automatically unsuspend sites when pending invoices are paid.

Learn more about Auto Suspension.

Auto Deletion

As an additional feature of its powerful automation capabilities, Reseller gives you the option of automatically deleting sites with unpaid invoices.

You can choose to not auto delete sites, or delete them where invoices remain unpaid after a specific time period set by you.

Note that the number of days you specify to trigger auto deletion must be greater than the number of days you have set for auto suspension to take effect.

Learn more about Auto Deletion.

Pricing

The last step is to set up your hosting product’s pricing.

The Pricing screen allows you to create different plans, set your subscription terms, and charge whatever amount you want on top of your wholesale purchase pricing.

Click the Continue button when done to create your product.

Your first hosting product is now done and the product details will display in your Hosting Reseller screen.

After adding a product, you can perform additional functions such as viewing or editing it, add a pricing plan, duplicate it to easily create a new product variation, and even archive it if it’s no longer being used.

Rinse and repeat the above steps by clicking on the Add New Product button to continue adding all of the hosting products you plan to resell.

If you need help with this step, see our documentation.

Step 3) Set Up Your White Label Client Portal

This is where all the magic happens for your clients.

The client portal is your white labeled branded version of our Hub site management interface. It’s powered by The Hub Client plugin, which is needed for Reseller and included with the Premium membership, and runs on your own WordPress website on your own domain.

It’s your dedicated portal where clients will sign-in when they buy from you to manage their account details, pay you, and purchase services including hosting and more, directly from your site…all fully controlled and customized by you.

Portal creation is instant as it’s a copy of your existing Hub interface, and there are numerous design, branding, and customization options.

Setting up a white-labeled client portal will enable your clients to not only manage their subscriptions and invoices, but also purchase reseller products directly from you and automatically create sites hosted with WPMU DEV.

You have complete control over setting up your clients’ experience in the portal.

To set up a client portal with your own branding, simply install and activate The Hub Client plugin on your site, configure settings for branding, navigation, login, and signup, and add the products you created in the previous step.

For detailed instructions on installing and using the plugin refer to The Hub Client plugin documentation.

Step 4) Integrate Reseller With Your Site

The final step to complete the automation process is to activate and set up Reseller on your client portal with information about your products and services.

To do this, make sure you have installed The Hub Client plugin on your site, then go to “The Hub Client > Reseller” page and activate Hosting Reseller.

Next, add/import the products you created in Step 2 into The Hub Client by clicking either on the Add Product or Import all products buttons.

Note: Editing products in The Hub will automatically update the information in your pricing tables for existing products, so you won’t need to reimport the product in The Hub Client.

Clicking on the Add Product button allows you to select a product and pricing variations, and configure visibility settings for its pricing table.

Alternatively, you can import all products you have created in The Hub by clicking on the Import all products button…

After importing, a table will display information about each of your added products.

Note: If you have not added any products, you will see the option to add a product or import all products below the Hosting Products table. After adding a product, the Import all products button will be replaced with the Customize pricing table button.

Click on the down arrow to view more details about each product (or click on the up arrow to hide this information).

After adding your products, click on the Customize pricing table button to create and customize a pricing table with your Hosting Reseller products to match your site and brand.

Note: An alternative option to using The Hub Client’s pricing table is to copy and add checkout links generated by Reseller to your existing setup where you’d like customers to purchase your products.

Once your billing, products, and portal are ready, you can easily embed your new products and pricing table on your site via shortcode or Gutenberg block where clients can access the information and purchase your products and services.

You’re now ready to resell WPMU DEV!

Your Clients’ Onboarding Experience With Reseller

Now that you know how to set up Reseller, let’s take a look at the ‘turn-key’ client onboarding experience:

A new user selects a hosting plan from your site…

They’ll create a new account and log in to your portal…

Then create a site, choose a template, set up site credentials, server location, and securely check out…

Your clients can easily create a new site with or without templates, depending on how you have configured your product packages…

The client will be presented with your fully-branded payment screen as the last step of the process. Once payment is made, their site will then be automatically created.

After payment is successfully processed, Reseller will do its magic and create a brand new, fully configured site on an optimized hosting plan in just a few minutes.

Once the site is done, your clients will then have immediate access to their sites, via your client portal.

It’s all 100% automated, white-labeled under your own brand, and completely hands-off if you want it to be.

Welcome to your new WPMU DEV reseller business!

Want Ka-Ching? Then Reseller’s Your Thing!

As mentioned earlier, Reseller is only available with our Premium plan, which includes unlimited site licenses and tools, Pro plugin suite, free yearly hosting credit, and exclusive access to our lowest hosting prices. The plan also includes a full 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it completely risk-free today.

Become a WPMU DEV Reseller today and start automating your existing agency setup, or tap into a wealth of potential new revenue streams selling niche hosting services.

If you are already a Premium member, what are you waiting for? Jump in, take a look, and get started right now.

Also, watch this space, we have big plans to continue building additional ways (and improving) how our platform can help WordPress professionals drive recurring revenue without the hassle.

PS: Domain reseller automation is now live too, so you can add another source of income to your business and value to your clients!