How to Price Reseller Hosting to Clients (Worksheet)

To price reseller hosting profitably, base your prices on your plan's renewal rate rather than the intro promo, then charge for the support and reliability you provide, not for disk space. Most successful resellers charge $8 to $20 per site per month, package hosting with maintenance, and never compete on price with billion-dollar hosts. This worksheet turns those principles into a number you can quote with confidence.

Start from the renewal price, not the promo

Your true cost is the renewal rate. A plan advertised at $9 a month that renews at $30 costs you $30 for pricing purposes, because the discount is a one-year gift, not your ongoing cost. Divide the renewal price by the number of accounts you realistically expect to sell — not the plan's maximum — to get your cost per account. Every plan in our best reseller hosting ranking is shown with its intro-to-renewal band precisely so you can do this sum honestly.

Pricing clients off the promo rate is the classic reseller mistake. It looks profitable in year one and quietly turns into a loss at renewal, when your cost jumps but your client's price does not.

The worksheet

Work through five figures to reach a defensible price per site:

1. Renewal cost of your plan per month (e.g. $30).
2. Accounts you expect to fill it with, conservatively (e.g. 15).
3. Cost per account = plan renewal divided by accounts (about $2).
4. Support time per account per month, valued at your hourly rate (even 15 minutes is real).
5. Price = cost per account, plus support value, plus your margin — landing most people at $8 to $20.

Notice how small the raw hosting cost is — around $2 — and how much of your price is really support and margin. That is the correct way to see it: you are not selling $2 of disk space, you are selling a managed service and a person to call.

Package hosting, do not sell it alone

Hosting sold as a bare commodity forces you to compete with hosts spending millions on marketing — a fight you lose. Sold as part of a care plan (hosting, updates, backups, small changes, a monthly report) for a single monthly fee, it becomes a premium service where the hosting cost is invisible and your margin is healthy. This is why reselling works so well for designers; see the best reseller hosting for web designers for how to structure those plans.

Billing model: monthly vs annual

Annual billing improves cash flow and cuts churn, and it lets you pass on the same multi-year discounts you get. Many resellers offer both, nudging clients to annual with a small discount. Whichever you choose, automate it as you grow so invoicing and renewals do not eat your evenings; free WHMCS and billing options covers the tools that handle recurring billing and provisioning.

Build in a buffer for reality

Leave margin for the things that will happen: a price rise from your host, a client who needs far more support than average, chargebacks and refunds, and the occasional bad month. If your price only works when everything goes right, it does not work. A comfortable margin over renewal cost is what keeps the business pleasant rather than stressful.

A worked example, start to finish

Say your plan renews at $30 a month and you conservatively expect to fill it with 15 accounts. That is $2 per account in raw cost. You reckon each client averages 15 minutes of support a month, and your time is worth $60 an hour, so that is $15 of support value per account per month. Add a margin and you might land on a $19 to $25 monthly hosting price, or fold it into a $99 care plan. Notice the support time, not the hosting, is the biggest number — which is why competing on the hosting price alone makes no sense.

When and how to raise prices on existing clients

Costs rise — your host's renewal, a cPanel increase, your own time — so plan to review prices annually rather than never. Give existing clients plenty of notice, tie the increase to added value (a better backup, a faster server, more included changes), and grandfather loyal clients modestly if you can. Most clients accept a small, well-explained rise far more easily than resellers fear; the bigger risk is never raising prices and slowly eroding your margin until the business is not worth running.

Discounts, annual billing and churn

Use annual billing deliberately: a one or two month discount for paying yearly improves your cash flow, reduces churn and matches the multi-year discount you receive from your host. Avoid deep introductory discounts that attract price-sensitive clients who leave the moment a cheaper option appears — those are the most support-hungry and least loyal customers you can acquire. Steady, fair pricing attracts the clients who value reliability, and they are the ones who make a reseller business pleasant to run.

Do not compete on price with the giants

The strongest pricing decision you can make is to stop competing on price at all. Large hosts spend millions acquiring customers and can undercut anyone on a bare hosting plan; you cannot win that race and should not enter it. What you sell that they cannot is a named person who knows the client's site and answers when something breaks. Priced as a relationship rather than a commodity, hosting supports a margin the giants never touch, because the client is buying trust and convenience, not gigabytes. Anchor your price to the value of that service and your own time, not to the cheapest plan on a comparison table, and you protect both your margin and the kind of client you attract.

Finally, put your prices in writing and stand behind them. Publishing clear plan tiers, or at least having a fixed rate card you quote from, stops you discounting on the spot and signals professionalism. Clients who haggle hardest on price are usually the ones who generate the most support and churn, so a firm, fair, well-explained price is also a filter for the customers you actually want. Confidence in your pricing is itself part of the product: it tells a client you run a real business that will still be here to support their site next year.