How To Profit As A White Label WPMU DEV Hosting Reseller

If you provide WordPress web development services, adding hosting plans to the menu is a no-brainer way to grow your business and generate monthly recurring revenue (MRR). In this article we show you how to automate this as part of your services.

Interested in learning how to sell web hosting under your own brand with WPMU DEV? This is the article for you.

Your clients need reliable WordPress hosting, and it’s a service that can be fully automated and easily bundled with your web development services or offered as a separate add-on.

We surveyed our 50,000+ members, conducted our own testing, and looked at various leading web hosts to ensure this article covers all you need to know about offering superior hosting plans to your clients.

“Simply the best WordPress hosting, tools and support that’s out there!” Doubledutch Studio (WPMU DEV member)

After reading this article, you will know:

• Why WPMU DEV’s reseller hosting can provide your web development business with an additional and profitable stream of recurring income,
• How to configure WPMU DEV’s hosting plans under your own brand using our white label tools, and
• How to package different hosting plans to suit your customers’ and your business needs.

We’ll cover:

Building Your Web Hosting Packages

Whether you’re servicing a new client, or bringing over clients with existing websites, offering them an affordable, fully optimized, and fully managed hosting service integrated with domain reselling, email hosting,  and a suite of built-in powerful premium plugins covering everything from site security, site optimization, and analytics to SEO, contact forms, and lead generation makes for a great upsell…

Especially if it’s all done under your own brand.

Many businesses don’t understand web hosting, the different types of hosting, or even how to compare different web hosting companies.

And, unless you want to see clients develop a rapid case of extreme eye-crossing, don’t even try to talk to them about managing their own servers.

This makes web hosting the perfect complementary service to bundle with your website building services.

Fortunately, with our managed WordPress hosting, this is not only possible, but if you’re a WPMU DEV member, you are automatically elevated to the status of a white label hosting reseller.

Because you’re already set up and ready to offer a hosting service that is reliable, fast (as shown by stress-testing), and optimized for WordPress…all under your brand!

All you need to resell hosting to your clients, then, is to simply configure our hosting plans as your own.

Now let’s take you through our “hosting reseller blueprint.”

First, we’ll show you how to configure your reseller hosting plans, then we’ll talk about hosting add-ons you can upsell with your services.

Configuring Reseller Web Hosting Plans

Regardless of whether you decide to service small, medium, or large clients, you can set up a hosting plan to suit all their needs and budgets by simply choosing one of WPMU DEV’s hosting plans.

In terms of the cost of purchasing dedicated WordPress hosting, research other hosting companies and you will see that WPMU DEV offers extremely competitive pricing.

As a WPMU DEV hosting reseller, then, all you need to do to create a hosting service package is:

1. Choose a plan
2. Add your markup
3. Resell it under your own brand.

WPMU DEV provides you with hosting services to resell and gives you the tools to offer professional hosting services, like The Hub Client plugin (for rebranding our hosting as your own) and Client Billing (to create your hosting packages and charge your clients).

Let’s walk you through an example so you can see how easy it is to set up white label hosting packages as a reseller.

1. Install And Configure The Hub Client Plugin

The Hub Client Plugin allows you to set up a client portal on your own website.

This will create your own white labeled hosting interface/panel and (optionally) allow your clients to access and manage their hosted sites.

See our documentation for full instructions on installing and configuring The Hub Client plugin.

2. Create Hosting Packages

We offer different hosting plans to suit different user levels.

From basic sites for startup businesses, to sites for growing businesses, to enterprise-level hosting plans designed for businesses with extreme hosting requirements.

All WPMU DEV hosting plans are fully optimized for WordPress, built on a world-class hosting platform, and include essential hosting features like:

• Developer tools (e.g. one-click staging, self-healing architecture, SFTP/SSH, phpMyAdmin, WP-CLI, and a host of other tools and features),
• Free email accounts
• Dedicated IP address
• SSL certificates
• Nightly backups
• Daily malware scans
• And too many other features to mention. (See everything included in all of our hosting plans.)

How you configure your hosting packages will depend on selecting plans to match specs like:

• Dedicated Memory
• Number of CPUs
• Storage
• Bandwidth
• Estimated Visits

So, let’s say that your business specializes in developing websites for small businesses that need a robust web presence with reliable and affordable hosting.

We offer three different basic website hosting plans in the Lite range.

This lets you resell up to three different hosting packages for your small business clients, which you can rename however you like, set your own pricing level as a reseller, and bundle with your web development services however works best for your business.

Likewise, if you deal with larger clients, you can create and resell packages using any or all of our Essential or Premium hosting plans.

Here’s an example hosting services menu we’ve set up with a choice of three hosting packages…

We simply renamed the three ‘Lite’ plans (Bronze, Silver, Gold) as Starter, Premium, and Elite.

You can do the same. Choose the plans you want to resell, name these whatever you like, and add your hosting menu to the “Services” page of your website.

Congratulations! You have just become a professional hosting company able to offer hosting services with features that are on par with all the top industry players…and all with $0 infrastructure costs.

Now, let’s match your hosting packages to how your clients will be billed.

3. Set Up Service Packages in Clients & Billing

After deciding on the hosting packages you want to resell to clients and working out your pricing model, the next step is to set your hosting packages up in the Clients & Billing area of The Hub.

You can set up your hosting packages as separate services or bundle these with other services (e.g. web development, maintenance, etc.).

You can also create multiple plans (e.g. set up monthly and annual pricing options), specify the number of billing cycles, set up hosting plans that auto-renew until cancelled, and more.

In our example, we have set up our Starter Hosting Plan with two recurring pricing options (monthly and annually).

Our annual option incentivizes clients to pay a whole year of hosting fees upfront by giving them two free months of hosting.

You can set up plans however you want to best suit your business.

For full details on how to create and sell product and service packages to your clients and manage your business billing processes (e.g. invoicing, create hosting subscriptions, accept secure payments, etc.) from The Hub and The Hub Client, see our documentation.

4. Configure User Roles For Hosting Packages

If you plan to give clients access to a client dashboard as part of your white labeled hosting service, the last step is to make sure that when your clients log into their dashboard, they will only have access to features, options, and settings associated with their hosting plan.

This is all done in the Clients & Billing > Clients > Roles section of The Hub.

Using our “Starter” hosting plan as an example, first, create a new role that you will assign all of your new clients to for this hosting plan to…

Next, edit and configure all the settings and options you’d like your clients to access from their client dashboard.

You can allow clients to “view and edit”, “view only” (i.e. not edit), hide, or customize all features.

This gives you complete control over what your hosting clients will see (or not see) and be able to change (or not change) in their dashboard.

After setting up and configuring user roles for each hosting plan you intend to offer, all you need to do now is manually add new clients in your Clients & Billing section and assign them to the service and client role that matches their hosting plan.

They will then be automatically billed as per their subscription and be able to login to a dashboard customized for their plan.

Upselling Web Hosting Security Add-ons

One of the great things about reselling WPMU DEV hosting is that every single hosting plan we offer comes with all hosting features already enabled and configured for optimal performance.

This means that an easy way to create higher-level “premium” hosting packages (other than choosing to resell our bigger hosting plans) is to choose whether to give your clients “visibility” to these features that you sell as add-ons to your “premium” clients.

For example, in the demo hosting packages we set up earlier, our “Premium” package’s security options include daily malware scans and Web Application Firewall (WAF), whereas the “Starter” package only includes daily malware scans.

Given that all hosting plans already come with WAF enabled and activated, you have the following options when it comes to setting up hosting for your clients:

1. (Easier option) – Leave WAF enabled for all customers but “hide” its visibility to clients assigned to the “Starter” hosting plan. Your “Starter” clients will still benefit from the added security that WAF provides, but they just won’t know that the feature is turned on and actively protecting their sites.
2. Disable WAF when configuring the user role for customers assigned to the “Starter” hosting plan, and leave it enabled for “Premium” hosting plans customers.

To “hide” WAF visibility (i.e. your clients won’t see the WAF settings displayed in their client dashboard), do this:

1. Go to The Hub > Clients & Billing > Clients section.
2. Click on the ellipsis icon next to the role you want to edit and select the Edit Role option.
3. If the Hosting option is enabled, select Custom from the dropdown menu
4. Scroll down to the Tools section and deselect ‘Update WAF settings’ to disable it
5. Click Save to update your settings.

To disable WAF for any user role, go to The Hub, select the client’s site, go to Hosting > Tools > Web Application Firewall, then select ‘On’ and use the toggle switch to turn WAF ‘Off’ and click the Save button.

If any “Starter” client wants to stay on their existing hosting plan but purchase WAF as an add-on for extra web hosting security, then all you have to do to upgrade their service and include WAF is to either:

1. Make WAF visible in their client dashboard (if WAF has been left turn on), or
2. Make WAF visible in their client dashboard and turn WAF back on (if you have manually disabled WAF in their hosting account)

Remember to create a “Hosting Security Add-on” option in The Hub’s Clients & Billing section and this option to your client’s services, so they will be invoiced for it.

Upselling Web Hosting Performance Add-ons

Selling web hosting performance as an add-on works in a similar way as selling enhanced hosting security.

All WPMU DEV’s hosting plans are already fully optimized for best performance, so the easiest way to set up your ‘basic’ hosting plans is to simply hide options like ‘Performance’ or ‘Uptime monitoring’ from being visible on their client dashboard.

For example, if you don’t want clients to view hosting performance features on their dashboard, you can completely hide all ‘Performance’ features by editing the client role…

Or you can choose to make some Performance options visible on the client’s dashboard…

This way, if any clients would like to remain on their existing hosting plan but get additional ‘performance’ as an add-on, you can simply upgrade their service by turning on the visibility of all of some of the Performance features and adding the ‘Performance’ add-on package to their account, so they get automatically invoiced for it.

Providing Clients Hosting Support

Often, the difference between premium-level and basic hosting support comes down to providing more ways for customers to reach you when they need help or if something goes wrong.

For example, The Hub Client integrates with live chat support services, such as LiveChat, Tawk.to, and HubSpot and allows clients to access your support services directly from their client dashboard areas.

You can control the level of support you give through live chat support through any of the third-party applications you choose (for example, it can just be email).

See our documentation section to learn how to integrate chat widgets with The Hub Client.

As a WPMU DEV hosting reseller, however, you are not limited by technology constraints when it comes to offering premium support add-ons.

You can offer any kind of service you like to help your clients improve their business… on-site training packages, zoom training, exclusive access to client training manuals, guides, video courses, etc.

Here’s all you need to do to provide premium support add-ons:

1. Create a page on your site called ‘support’ and list all the additional support services and packages you want to offer.
2. Add a form listing your support add-ons to this page (e.g. using Forminator) or just provide your email so your clients can select these packages.
3. Link to this page from The Client Hub.
4. Create your support packages through The Hub’s Clients & Billing feature.
5. Deliver the support and invoice your clients.

Get Started As A White Label Hosting Reseller Today

WPMU DEV provides everything you need to resell quality web hosting under your own brand.

Our hosting plans are not only designed to help you meet every client’s need, but our tools allow you to white label the hosting and client dashboards as your own, set up customized packages to suit your business, and invoice clients for all the services, add-ons, and subscription options you care to make available.

You will find no better partner to resell hosting services than WPMU DEV. We provide all the tools and the support you need, backed by a 200+ strong global team of experts in all things WordPress.

If you’re a member, everything is already set up to help you start reselling hosting services as part of your web development business today.

If you’re not a member yet, choose one of our membership plans to get started. Our free plan is the best place to start and includes unlimited site management, built-in billing, plugins, and more.