Hosting Terms, for Name Holders
Reseller hosting runs on nameservers wearing your own domain
You have been handed ns1 and ns2 on your own domain and told to make them work — this is the registry half of that job.
The short answer
Reseller hosting means buying capacity wholesale and selling it under your own name, and the piece that touches the registry is delegation: client names are pointed at nameservers on a domain you own, such as ns1.yourbrand.com, so nothing in the client's DNS names your supplier.
The rest of the arrangement — packages, quotas, invoices — is commercial. The nameservers, the glue records behind them and the registrant field on each client name are the parts that decide who genuinely controls what.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Terms left unexplained
100+
Entries, each linked to its neighbours
Real
Examples, taken from live zones
Free
To read, with no account needed
A management layer sits above a set of walled-off individual accounts: you define the packages, set the quotas and hold the customer relationship, while the provider keeps the hardware and network running out of sight. On the reseller tiers here that includes private nameservers carrying your brand rather than ours.
White-labelling only holds if the DNS holds. One nameserver left on the supplier's domain, one PTR nobody changed, one WHOIS record naming the wrong registrant, and the arrangement is transparent to any client who thinks to look.
Where a private nameserver is actually created
In two places, and both are needed. In the platform you declare that ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com are the nameservers new accounts should be given. At your registrar, for yourbrand.com, you register those same hostnames as host records so the registry publishes their addresses as glue.
Do only the first and client names delegated to ns1.yourbrand.com will fail to resolve for anybody whose resolver has not already cached the answer. Do only the second and the nameservers exist but serve nothing. Neither failure produces a useful error message.
The registrant field is the ownership question
Whoever is listed as registrant of a client's name controls that name, whatever the invoice says and whatever the panel shows. Register client names in your own company's details and you own their names; register them in the client's details and you are managing an asset that belongs to them.
Both models are defensible if everybody understands which one is in use. A designer invoicing thirty client sites at £20 a month each has thirty registrant fields to be right about, and the version that ends in a dispute is always the one where nobody ever said which model applied — so the client discovers the position on the day they want to leave.
What actually moves when a client leaves
Three separate things, on three separate clocks. The files move by backup restore, in an afternoon. The name moves by transfer: an auth code, a confirmation email, and no move at all within 60 days of registration or of the previous transfer. The DNS moves the moment delegation changes, which is usually the first thing to happen and the last thing anyone plans.
Order it deliberately. Restore the files at the new host, add the records there, then change delegation, then transfer the name at leisure. Handing over an auth code before the destination is ready is how a working site becomes a fortnight of nothing.
What the platform gives you here
The reseller tiers carry private nameservers in your own name, your branding through the panel, and packages and prices that are yours to set. Accounts are opened, suspended and resized from your own management panel, and each client's account is sealed off from the others.
The reseller refund window is seven days rather than the thirty that applies to shared, business, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting — worth knowing before you build a client book on top of it.
The registrar half of the job, written down
Every reseller platform documents how to type nameserver names into its own panel. Almost none mentions the host records you must register at your registrar for those names to mean anything. That missing step is the one this glossary keeps insisting on.
Hosting renews at the figure you ordered at, so year two costs precisely what year one did.
- Locks and grace periods given in days, not folklore
- Panel screens named, so you know where to click
- Open to read, with no account and no mailing list
- 100+ entries on names, zones, delegation and transfers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Glue records, in the right order
Which half of a private nameserver is created in the panel and which at the registrar, and what fails when only one is done.
Linked by mechanism, not keyword
Each entry points at the record type, the panel screen or the registry rule it depends on, so one lookup leads to the next useful one.
Registrant recorded on purpose
The one WHOIS field that decides who owns a client's name, and why it should be a stated policy rather than an accident.
The failure mode named first
Every entry says what breaks earliest when the job goes wrong, and the answer is very often email.
Client exits planned backwards
Files, DNS and the registration move on three different clocks; the order that keeps a site answering throughout.
Ownership before convenience
Where a shortcut quietly costs you control of a name, the entry says so before it explains how the shortcut works.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Register the nameserver hostnames first
Create ns1 and ns2 as host records at the registrar for your own domain, so the registry publishes glue before a single client name is delegated.
- 2
Prove them against a client name you can break
Delegate a test name, query it from an outside resolver, and only then put a live client on the same nameservers.
- 3
Write down who the registrant is
Decide whether client names are registered in your details or theirs, put it in your terms, and keep the WHOIS records matching it.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- MailChannels on outbound mail, so post leaving your name arrives
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- WordPress Toolkit included, with the updates seen to for you
- Staging copies, so a change is tried before the live name sees it
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- The account live minutes after checkout
- The first year of the name included when the hosting plan is annual
- A zone editor in the panel, so the records stay yours to change
- Availability checked live before you pay for anything
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Do private nameservers hide my supplier from clients?
From casual inspection, yes: delegation shows ns1.yourbrand.com and the panel wears your branding. A determined client can still resolve those hostnames to addresses and look up who owns the block, so the honest description is white-label rather than anonymous. What matters commercially is that nothing in the client's own DNS, invoices or panel names anybody but you.
Who owns a client's domain name if I registered it for them?
Whoever the registrant field names. That is the whole of the answer, and it is why the field deserves a policy rather than a default. If you register in your own details, the client is renting a name from you and should be told so; if you register in theirs, you can still manage the name completely — auth codes, renewals, DNS — while the asset stays where the client expects it.
Who is the registrant of a name ordered through you?
You are. The name is registered in your own details, stays registered in your name for the term you have paid for, and can move to any registrar once the standard 60-day window has passed. A supplier that registers your name in its own details has taken the asset, whatever the invoice says.
How soon after registering can a name be moved?
Not within 60 days of a registration or of a previous transfer. That clock belongs to the registry rather than to us, so no amount of goodwill at either registrar shortens it. Plan a move around the date and the transfer is paperwork; ignore it and the request is simply refused.
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