ELASTIC SITES PROVIDE HIGH LEVEL OF RESOURCES WITHOUT THE MANAGEMENT HASSLES OF VPS



If you are like most hosting providers, you offer both shared hosting and virtual private servers (VPSs) to your customers. Many of your customers start on shared hosting but grow to exceed the limits of their plan. At this point, you suggest that the customer switches to a VPS. If you don’t offer VPS packages, you are likely to lose the customer to your competitor.

Elastic Sites are alternatives to VPSs. They allocate a higher level of resources to individual customers on your shared hosting servers.

Elastic Sites are incredibly profitable, easy to launch and manage, and are loved by customers.

Elastic Site vs VPS

VPSs offer advantages over shared hosting — more resources, root access, and customization to name a few — but they also require the customer to buy software licenses and handle configuration, hardening, and application installation. Shared hosting customers that upgrade to a VPS are often confused and frustrated by the costs and management responsibilities that come with the server.

In customer surveys and interviews commissioned by CloudLinux and cPanel, hosting providers emphasized that VPSs are a poor solution for shared hosting customers who need more resources. When customers upgrade to a VPS, they require a great deal of support and are more likely to cancel their plan. Some hosts said the churn rate for shared hosting customers who upgrade to a VPS may be as high as 50%.

Some hosting providers that use CloudLinux OS, which limits and allocates resources (CPU, RAM, etc.) to each customer, offer shared hosting plans with greater and more flexible resources as an alternative to VPSs. They have found that these high-resource plans resulted in greater customer satisfaction, lower churn, and higher profit margins. Offering Elastic Sites to your customers simply means using CloudLinux OS to create larger shared hosting plans to better meet your customers’ needs. These new plans would address their requirements without the additional hurdles of server management, software installation, and hardening.

As you know, shared hosting customers are easier to support and shared hosting servers are easier to manage. In addition, because shared hosting requires only one instance of the OS, Apache, MySQL, etc., it saves significant overhead compared to VPSs. This ease of management and decreased overhead, combined with the higher prices that can be charged for Elastic Sites, results in higher profit margins for hosts. For example, Antagonist Web Hosting noted that offering Elastic Sites powered by CloudLinux OS has helped them raise their average revenue per customer by 26% over 12 months.

Through the resources available on this website, we will explain why hosting providers should offer shared hosting plans with more resources instead of upgrading shared hosting users to VPSs. This alternative provides growing customers with the resources they need without adding the burden of server management. These higher-resource alternatives are called Elastic Sites.

66% of customers switch to a VPS just to get more resources, according to the survey of over 400 hosting providers.

 
To learn more about Elastic Sites and how to market, manage, and price this new offering, explore these resources:

Resources



MARKETING WHITE PAPER
In this paper, you will learn how Elastic Sites provide shared hosting users with a better upgrade path, as well as the advantages of Elastic Sites and how to market them.
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Elastic Sites vs. VPS
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER
This paper is for CTOs and Sysadmins looking to understand the differences between Elastic Sites and VPSs as well as how to set up Elastic Sites.
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Antagonist Case Study
CASE STUDY
Learn how Antagonist Web Hosting uses Elastic Sites powered by CloudLinux OS to give their customers an upgrade path with fewer headaches than VPSs.
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Elastic Sites vs VPS Solution Comparision
SOLUTION COMPARISON
The vast majority of shared hosting customers upgrade to a VPS just to get more resources, so how do Elastic Sites compare with unmanaged & managed VPSs?
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How to Get Started with Elastic Sites

If you are new to CloudLinux, learn why it is the #1 OS for multi-tenant environments.

If you are already using CloudLinux OS in your shared hosting, explore the library above to learn how to benefit from high-resource plans and deploy Elastic Sites as an offering. It will result in fewer tickets, fewer management issues, greater customer satisfaction, and greater profit margins.

Elastic Sites Requirements

According to the web hosting providers that already offer Elastic Sites hosting, it is replacing VPS for many customers and is becoming their key product offering. Elastic Sites can have ANY resource limits, as large or as small as your customers need, but any of your Elastic Sites must have an ability to grow to at least:
  • Memory Limit (physical) - 2GB of RAM
  • CPU Limit - 4 cores
You must be able to perform the upgrade within 24 hours from the time customer submits their request. Your Elastic Sites plans must list CPU and RAM allocations on your website.

If you would like to offer Elastic Sites™ plans, in addition to your shared plans, and think you qualify to be listed in the Elastic Sites directory, please email us at info [at] elasticsites [dot] com for our review. Upon approval, you will be able to utilize the Elastic Sites mark on your website and link it to this page to provide more information to your customers. You will also be able to display the Official Elastic Sites Provider seal and utilize any of the content available on this website. Elastic Sites and the Elastic Sites Provider seal or logo are trademarks of Cloud Linux and you are not authorized to use the Elastic Sites mark or logo without Cloud Linux’s express approval.
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