With a surprisingly little amount of time, effort, and money, you can also offer domain registration to your customers. Here are some possible ways to go about it:

“Simple” Domain Reselling

If you are a very small host and you mainly host local clients, friends, family, etc., the easiest way to resell domains is simply to register the domains for your customers at a major registrar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions and charge a mark-up of the price you pay. This works well for web designers who manage their clients’ web sites and for hosting companies that cater to non-technical customers.

Benefits: no initial investment required, easy (no software, etc.)
Downsides: customers can’t manage the domains without you giving them access to your main account, lower profit margins, lack of advanced features

Domain Reselling

One of the most common methods of domain reselling is getting what is called a domain reseller account at a major registrar such as eNom or Bulkregister. A brief comparison of a few domain resellers is below.

Bulkregister
Benefits: powerful tools, competitive domain pricing, resellers can set what customers can and can’t control, API, addons available
Downsides: small initial investment ($49)

eNom
Benefits: API, integration with lots of billing systems, competitive domain pricing, lots of tools, addon services available
Downsides: $100 initial investment required, available support can lack at times

Register.com (Rconnection)
Benefits: API available, addon services available, lots of support options
Downsides: $125 initial investment required, higher per domain fees

GoDaddy ( Wild West Domains )
Benefits: competitive rates, lots of addons and bonuses, competitive domain pricing
Downsides: initial investments from $99 to to $229, doesn’t integrate as well with existing systems as other options

A lot of web hosts offer domain reseller accounts with reseller or dedicated server hosting packages. You may still need to provide the initial investment, but you can usually skip to a lower per domain rate than if you signed up by yourself.

Get ICANN Accredited

ICANN is the organization that accredits domain registrars. If you already have a large hosting business with a large customer base, it may be worth looking into ICANN accreditation. The investment is much larger than a domain reseller account and significantly more involved and complicated.

Details about becoming ICANN accredited can be found at their web site: http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation.htm .

Before making a decision:

• Review the companies’ sites in detail.
• Ensure that their system (API, user-interface, etc.) will work well with your current systems (billing systems, account management, etc.).
• Ensure their systems are easy to use for both your customers and staff.
• Be sure to read the reseller agreements and any related legal terms.
• Think about the investment. Is domain registration something that your company wants to do, can afford, has the ability (staff, technical, etc.) and wishes to be involved with?