Running reseller hosting without license fees

Reseller hosting has two costs on a licensed panel: the server, and a license that grows with every customer your resellers sign up. The free panels avoid the license but mostly stop at one administrator. HestiaCP users have asked for reseller accounts since 2019, and the answer has been "not planned". This post shows what reseller hosting costs on cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin in 2027, and then sets up a reseller with customers on ArcPanel, which has a reseller role and no license fee.

What does reseller hosting cost on a licensed panel?#

Take one VPS with three resellers, each with 25 customers: 78 accounts and about 150 domains. These are the store prices of a year of licenses, from the vendors' own pages, checked in October 2026:

The model matters as much as the price. cPanel counts accounts, so every customer a reseller signs up counts on your license, and past 100 accounts each one adds $0.55 a month in 2027. Plesk sells resellers only with Web Host, its most expensive edition. DirectAdmin's flat Standard license is the cheapest of the three. Open this case in the license cost calculator and change the numbers to match your servers. The new cPanel and Plesk prices are explained in cPanel's 2027 prices and Plesk's 2027 prices.

What does a reseller get in ArcPanel?#

ArcPanel has three roles: administrator, reseller and user. A reseller is an account that hosts customers of its own:

• A Customers page instead of Users, with an Add Customer wizard that checks the reseller's plan as you type.
• Packages the administrator allows, and optionally packages of the reseller's own, which can never pass the reseller's limits.
• Log in as a customer, to see what the customer sees and help them.
• A pool of ports to give to customers for Node.js and Docker apps.
• Statistics, backups and logs scoped to its own customers. A customer of another reseller answers "not found".

Customers are ordinary users. They manage their own web domains, mail, DNS, databases, cron jobs and backups, and do not know about the reseller's other customers.

Set up your first reseller#

You need an ArcPanel server and its administrator account. If you do not have one yet, follow the installation guide on a fresh Debian or Ubuntu server first.

1. Make a package resellers may give#

No shipped package is available to resellers, so a new reseller has nothing to give until you make one:

1. Open Packages, Copy default to a new package named starter, and edit it.
2. Give every limit a number instead of Unlimited, for example 5 web domains, 5 DNS zones, 5 mail domains, 25 mail accounts, 5 databases, 5 cron jobs and 5000 MB of disk and bandwidth.
3. In the Reseller card, turn on Available to resellers, and save.

The numbers matter. A reseller's own limits are numbers, so a package with an unlimited value never fits into them, and the panel refuses it with "The plan has no room for WEB_DOMAINS."

2. Create the reseller#

Open Users › Add User, choose the reseller package and set Role to Reseller. From the command line:

v-add-user acme 'Str0ng-pass' acme@example.com reseller "Acme Web"
v-change-user-role acme reseller

The shipped reseller package allows 25 customers, 100 web, DNS and mail domains, 1,000 mailboxes, 100 databases, 100 GB of disk and a pool of 100 ports, and may give every package marked Available to resellers. Copy it and change the numbers to sell bigger or smaller reseller plans.

3. Let the reseller add a customer#

The reseller signs in and opens Customers › Add Customer: the same wizard you use, without the Role and Owner fields. The command line does the same for you:

v-add-reseller-user acme bob 'Str0ng-pass' bob@example.com starter

4. Optional: let resellers make their own packages#

By default, resellers give only the packages you made available. To let them sell plans of their own, inside their own limits:

v-change-sys-config-value POLICY_RESELLER_CREATE_PACKAGES yes

A reseller's packages are visible only to that reseller, and may only use the shells you list in Shells resellers may give in their packages, which is nologin by default.

5. Optional: put your name on the panel#

Under Server › Configure › White Label you set the name in the browser tab, on the login page and in the panel's e-mails, the sender of those e-mails and the logo:

v-change-sys-config-value APP_NAME "Example Hosting"
v-change-sys-config-value FROM_EMAIL support@example.com

The brand belongs to the server. Every reseller and every customer on it sees the same name and logo.

How does the shared quota work?#

A reseller's package is one budget for the reseller and all its customers together. When the reseller adds a customer or changes a customer's package, the panel adds up the reseller's own usage and the limits of every customer's package, and refuses the change when the total would pass the reseller's limits.

With the numbers above, a reseller that hosts no sites of its own can give starter to 20 customers. The 21st would bring the total to 105 web domains, past the 100 of the reseller package, so the wizard says the plan has no room before anything is created. The reseller sees how much is left as Plan on its dashboard; you see it as Reseller plan on the reseller's page.

How do you check it worked?#

The panel counts usage again each night and after every change to a customer. To see the reseller's customers and recount at once:

v-update-reseller-counters all
v-list-reseller-users acme

In the panel, the Owner tree tab of Users shows every reseller with its customers. Use Log in as on the reseller: its sidebar shows Customers, and the list holds only its own.

What should you know before you sell it?#

• One level. Resellers do not nest: a reseller's customers are always users, so there are no sub-resellers.
• Suspension. Suspending a reseller does not suspend its customers. Suspend them as well when a reseller stops paying.
• Deleting. The panel will not delete a reseller that still has customers. Move them to another owner first.
• Billing. There is no WHMCS module yet. Billing systems can create and change accounts through ArcPanel's REST API v2 with scoped access keys.
• Servers. ArcPanel installs on a fresh Debian or Ubuntu server (amd64) and manages that one server. It does not convert a cPanel or Plesk server in place.
• Maturity. ArcPanel is a young project. Its changelog and roadmap show how often it ships and what comes next.

If your resellers need WHM by name, or your billing runs on a WHMCS module today, a licensed panel is still the simpler choice. If the license is what eats your margin, try a reseller on a spare server: it takes one package, one reseller and one customer.

Where to go next#

• Resellers: every field of the reseller package and what administrators see.
• Users and packages: the limits a package sets.
• White label: your name and logo in the panel.
• ArcPanel for hosting providers: support plans and migrations.