SwissCenter offers two families of shared hosting: individual accounts (Home and Business) and Reseller accounts (Reseller Start and Reseller Pro). They are not meant for the same purpose. This article explains the difference, why hosting other people's websites on an individual account is not allowed, and why third-party access does not change that.
In short
- An individual account is for hosting your own websites: the ones you, or your company, own.
- A Reseller account is for hosting your customers' websites: each customer gets their own account, separate from yours.
- Making hosting available to a third party on an individual account, even for free, is resale of the service. The general terms and conditions forbid it.
- Giving your webmaster third-party access does not turn an individual account into a Reseller account: it remains a single account, with the same resources and the same system user.
Individual account or Reseller account
|
Individual account (Home, Business) |
Reseller account (Start, Pro) |
| Intended for |
You: your websites, or those of your company or association |
An agency, webmaster or provider hosting its customers' websites |
| Structure |
One account, one account holder |
One Reseller account and a separate account per customer |
| Management console |
The account holder's |
Each customer has their own console, which you can customise (logo, support address) |
| Resources |
Shared by all the websites of the account |
Limits applied to each customer account |
| Quotas and services |
Those of your plan |
You set them for each of your customers |
| System user |
A single one for all the websites of the account |
One per customer account |
| Third-party domains |
Not allowed, even for free |
Allowed: this is what the plan is for |
On our published offer, Home allows 5 independent domains and Business an unlimited number. That limit counts domains, not who owns them: an unlimited number of domains does not mean those domains can belong to other people. Every domain on an individual account must belong to the account holder.
What this means technically
Resources belong to the account, not to the website
Resource limits are applied by CloudLinux to the account: processor, memory, disk throughput and operations, number of simultaneous connections. On an individual account, our offer states 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of memory for the whole account. All the websites share that allowance.
If one website gets a traffic spike or runs a heavy script, the other websites of the same account slow down or show an error, through no fault of their owners. On a Reseller account, each customer has their own allowance (2 cores and 2 GB per account): one customer's website takes nothing from another's.
A single system user for all domains
On an individual account, all websites run under the same system user, the account's. FTP accounts and SSH keys added to the account also act as that user. In practice:
- a PHP script from one website can read and modify the files of the other websites of the account, including their configuration files, which contain database passwords;
- if one website is hacked (an outdated WordPress plugin, for example), every website of the account is exposed: the clean-up has to cover the whole account, not a single website;
- no website is protected from the others: the separation between the people working on the account exists only in the interface, not at system level.
Between two separate accounts, on the other hand, each account is locked into its own environment (CageFS) and cannot see the others' files. That is the separation you get with a Reseller account: a hacked or resource-hungry customer does not affect the others.
One contract, one account holder
Billing, renewal, termination and suspension apply to the whole account. If the account is suspended, every website it hosts is suspended. If the account holder cancels, all the domains go with it. Someone whose website you host on your account has no contract with us and cannot claim anything from us.
Third-party access changes nothing
Third-party access in the Apanel console lets the account holder give a webmaster, agency or IT provider their own access to the console, limited to the domains, services, mailboxes and databases of their choice, without sharing the account password. See Give your webmaster or agency access to your hosting. Before giving a first access, the account holder must accept terms of use that restate this point.
It is a convenience for your own websites. It is not a way to share one account between several customers, because:
- the person you give access to works inside your account: same shared resources, same system user, same risk of contamination between websites;
- you remain the account holder and are responsible for everything that happens on the account, including what that person does;
- this access is not a hosting contract: the person has no invoice, no account of their own and no guarantee of continuity if you cancel.
| Situation |
Allowed? |
| Your webmaster or agency works on your websites |
Yes: this is what third-party access is for |
| Several domains of yours, or of your company, on the same account |
Yes |
| A customer's website (or a relative's, or another company's) hosted on your account, with third-party access so they can manage "their" domain |
No: this is resale |
| The same case, without charging for the hosting |
No: being free changes nothing |
If you are unsure about a particular situation (for example several companies of the same group), write to us before setting the website up.
What the general terms and conditions say
Article 16 of the general terms of service is clear: "The Customer shall not resell or transfer a Service except where expressly provided for in the online order procedure or in any written agreement from SwissCenter's administration." (The terms are published in French; this is our translation.) Making hosting available to a third party is resale, with or without payment. Reseller plans are the exception provided for this use.
Two other points to know:
- Article 20 reserves SwissCenter's right to suspend a service or terminate the contract with immediate effect in case of breach of the terms.
- The Acceptable Use Policy, which is part of the contract, makes the account holder responsible towards SwissCenter for the activities of their own customers.
What to do depending on your situation
| Your situation |
The right solution |
| You host, or want to host, the websites of several customers |
A Reseller plan: one account per customer, separate and billable by you |
| Your agency manages websites whose owners want to stay in control |
Each customer has their own individual account and gives you third-party access to work on it |
| You simply need several domains for your own business |
An individual account: Business has no limit on the number of domains |
To move to a Reseller plan, or to regularise an account that already hosts third-party websites, write to us at info@swisscenter.com from the account's contact address. The deadlines and steps for changing plan are described in Modify or cancel my hosting. You can compare plans on our hosting offer.