Windows Reseller Hosting

What is Windows reseller hosting and how does it work?

Windows reseller hosting means a hosting provider hands over resources on its Windows servers to you with reseller rights, and you sell those resources to your own customers as separate accounts. You log in to Plesk with the “reseller” role; you create customers, assign them hosting plans and set resource limits. Your customers manage only their own sites, databases and email accounts with their own Plesk logins.

The division of work in this model is clear:

• LIONFIN: the physical server, Windows Server and IIS updates, the Plesk licence and infrastructure, network and DDoS filtering, and 24/7 NOC and SOC monitoring.
• You: winning customers, setting plans and prices, billing and first-line customer support.
• Your customer: their site’s content and application.

It is the lowest-risk way to set up a hosting business without managing servers.

Who is Windows reseller hosting for?

Windows reseller hosting suits businesses whose customers work with ASP.NET, MSSQL or other Windows-specific technologies and who want to manage those customers’ hosting in one place. The most typical users are:

• .NET software houses: those building and launching custom ASP.NET Core applications for business clients.
• Web agencies: those offering their clients’ sites with hosting and maintenance after delivery.
• Packaged software vendors: those installing MSSQL-based accounting, booking or B2B portal software in a separate account for each customer.
• In-house IT teams: those opening separately managed sites for different company units or dealers.
• Hosting entrepreneurs: those who want to enter the Windows hosting market without investing in servers.

If most of your customers use PHP and WordPress, Linux-based reseller hosting with cPanel/WHM is a better start.

What can you do with the Plesk reseller panel?

The Plesk reseller panel lets you manage customer accounts, hosting plans and subscriptions from one screen; everything you manage stays within your reseller quota. The main tasks are:

1. Creating service plans: you define disk, traffic, domain, database and mailbox counts and the features allowed; for example, you set up your own plans such as “Business .NET” and “Economy Site”.
2. Creating customers and subscriptions: you create a customer record and assign it a plan; when the subscription opens, the domain is defined in IIS.
3. Managing resources and permissions: you choose whether a customer may change PHP settings, add scheduled tasks or edit DNS.
4. Monitoring usage: you see how much disk and traffic each customer uses and suggest a higher plan to those approaching the limit.
5. Logging in as the customer: while giving support, you can switch to the customer’s panel without asking for their password.

For the general capabilities of the panel, see Plesk hosting.

How are ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core applications hosted?

On Windows reseller plans, ASP.NET Framework applications run in IIS application pools and ASP.NET Core applications run through IIS’s ASP.NET Core Module; each subscription is isolated in its own application pool. This isolation prevents a memory leak or crash in one customer’s application from affecting other customers.

Common ways to publish an application:

• File publishing: uploading the output of Visual Studio or dotnet publish to the httpdocs folder over FTP.
• Git deployment: publishing directly from a repository.
• Web Deploy: one-click publishing from Visual Studio using the method Plesk supports on Windows servers.

The .NET version, application pool mode and web.config settings are managed on the ASP.NET Settings screen in Plesk. For ASP.NET Core applications, check before publishing that the runtime version you target is installed on the server, or publish the application with its own runtime (self-contained).

How are MSSQL databases managed?

MSSQL databases are created in the Databases section of Plesk; each database has its own user, and your customers can manage their databases remotely with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or Azure Data Studio.

What you need to know as a reseller:

• Space per database: depends on the plan and is listed on the plan card; design the plans you sell to customers around this limit.
• Connection string: applications connect with a connection string containing the server name, database name, user and password; keep the password in configuration, not in source code.
• Backup and migration: Plesk backups include databases; for moving from another server, a .bak backup or a script export can be used.
• Log file growth: if the recovery model and log size are not watched, the database quota can fill up unexpectedly.

MySQL databases can be used alongside MSSQL; this flexibility helps with PHP applications running on Windows.

How do white-label nameservers protect your brand?

White-label nameservers let your customers point their domains to your own domain (for example ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com) instead of LIONFIN’s name, so your customer never sees the infrastructure provider behind the service, only your brand. The Plesk panel access address and the notices you send your customers can also be designed with your own branding.

Setup takes two steps:

1. Child nameserver record: at the registrar where you bought your domain, you define IP addresses for ns1 and ns2; this record is also called a “glue” record.
2. DNS zone: you add A records for the same names to your DNS zone.

The nameserver IP addresses are listed in the service details in the customer panel. If you also want to sell your customers their domains, you can register them through LIONFIN and point them to your white-label nameservers.

How are SSL, email and security handled on customer sites?

On Windows reseller plans, a free SSL certificate can be set up for every customer site; it is installed from Plesk’s SSL/TLS Certificates screen and renews automatically. If a business customer wants an OV or EV certificate, you can upload the paid certificate from the same screen; options are listed under SSL certificates.

On the security side, the layers work like this:

• Network level: all traffic passes through the RouteFence firewall layer; volumetric DDoS attacks are filtered before they reach the server.
• Server level: Windows Server and IIS updates, application pool isolation and monitoring are handled by LIONFIN.
• Account level: getting customers to use strong passwords, recommending two-factor authentication for Plesk logins and closing unnecessary FTP accounts is up to you.

Email accounts are also created in Plesk. To keep your customers’ email out of spam folders, make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are defined on their domains; for business customers with heavy email use, a separate business email service may be the healthier choice.

What does the infrastructure and data center provide?

Windows reseller accounts are hosted on servers in the LIONFIN network, which has 600 Gbit/s of total upstream capacity, in data center cabinets where the cold aisle is kept at 18–24 °C. The infrastructure is monitored by 24/7 NOC and SOC teams; our uptime target is 99.99%, which is a target, not a guarantee.

As a reseller, it is important to keep this distinction when making promises to your customers about the infrastructure: in your own service agreement, do not guarantee a figure that your provider does not guarantee.

The servers are located in İzmir, Türkiye, which makes them a natural fit for visitors in Türkiye and the surrounding region and makes it easier to answer data location questions from business customers who process personal data. With server-side maintenance and updates handled by LIONFIN, you can serve many customers with a small team. See our data center for details.

Which workloads are not suitable for Windows reseller hosting?

Windows reseller hosting is designed for web applications and sites running on IIS; permanently running background services, desktop programs and jobs that require server-level software installation fall outside this model. Checking whether a project fits these limits before selling it to a customer avoids the hassle of a later migration.

• Windows services and long scheduled jobs: a permanently running Windows service or a batch job lasting hours cannot run in a shared environment; scheduled tasks in Plesk are for short, periodic jobs.
• Desktop applications: accounting or trading programs with a graphical interface need an RDP server.
• Installing components on the server: applications that need a COM component, a custom printer driver or a system-wide library require administrator rights; in that case a VDS server with Windows installed is the right choice.
• Single high-traffic applications: an application that would consume all the resources on its own also affects your other customers’ performance; give it a dedicated server.

Explaining this distinction clearly to customers at the sales stage is the most important part of managing expectations.

Which reseller plan should you choose?

Choose a reseller plan according to the number of customers you are targeting in the first year and the average disk and MSSQL needs per customer; with Windows customers, database space is often the deciding resource. To work it out:

1. Profile your customers: how many brochure sites, how many database-driven applications, how many email-heavy customers will there be?
2. Design your plans: set the disk, database and email values of the two or three plans you will sell to customers.
3. Calculate the total: plan values × expected number of customers; leave a reasonable margin, bearing in mind that not all customers will fill their quota at the same time.
4. Set a growth threshold: plan to move up a plan when you reach 70–80 percent of the account count or disk limit.

Current disk, account count, database space and backup values for the plans are in the plan table on this page. If your customer count or custom software needs exceed the reseller plan’s limits, you can move to a VDS or dedicated server with your own Plesk licence; for this decision, see the reseller hosting vs VPS comparison.

How are backups and customer migrations managed?

On Windows reseller plans, backups depend on the plan and the retention period is listed on the plan card; in addition, you can take manual backups per subscription or per customer with Plesk’s Backup Manager tool. As a reseller, when you tell customers “you have backups”, state clearly how often backups are taken and how many days back they go.

A good reseller backup routine:

• Manual backups before big changes, in addition to automatic backups.
• Downloading a copy of the backup to your own storage for critical customers.
• A written procedure to follow when a restore request comes in.

When moving customers from another provider, transfer the site to the new subscription with file and database backups, test the application on a temporary address and change DNS last; that way your customer experiences no downtime. For Plesk-to-Plesk moves, the Plesk Migrator tool makes the process much easier.

How do you grow your hosting business?

The key to growing a reseller business is to sell hosting not on its own, but as a service bundled with the customer’s real needs. A reseller specialising in .NET can sell the reassurance that “the team that builds your application also hosts it” instead of competing on price with general hosting companies.

• Automation: connecting ordering, invoicing and account creation with automation software such as WHMCS saves time as your customer count grows. Licences are in the control panel and automation licenses category.
• Bundling: business packages including hosting, SSL, maintenance and a backup commitment are more profitable than low-priced standalone hosting.
• Finding customers: your existing software customers are your easiest hosting customers.
• Support quality: you provide first-line support and pass infrastructure issues to us with a support ticket from the customer panel.