Margin Brief
PHP hosting plans — Running forty client sites across four PHP versions
Every reseller inherits somebody's abandoned application, and the interpreter version it insists on is the thing that decides how your evenings go.
Straight answer first
Buy hosting on current PHP with OPcache, Composer and per-site version switching, because a client book is never on one version and the alternative is a second platform bought to house one customer's inertia.
The commercial case is quieter than the technical one. Per-site switching means the 2014 application a client refuses to touch can sit on the same account as this month's build, you stop paying for somewhere to put it, and the upgrade conversation happens when you choose rather than when something finally breaks in public.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
99.9%
Uptime target behind your service
24/7
Engineers on call for you
Free
SSL included on client sites
NVMe
Disks under every account
For resellers and agencies whose client list accumulated rather than being designed. You did not pick these applications; you took them on, and each arrived with an interpreter version, a plugin nobody understands, and an owner who considers all of it your responsibility now.
Engine work and the JIT compiler turned PHP 8 into one of the quicker interpreted runtimes in everyday use, so the version dropdown is a real performance lever rather than mere housekeeping. That matters to a reseller twice over: quicker client sites produce fewer complaints, and fewer complaints is the only support saving that scales with the book.
The version spread you actually inherit
A book of forty client sites is rarely a book of one platform. There is the current WordPress estate, two Joomla sites somebody built in a hurry, a bespoke application on an interpreter nobody wants to name out loud, and a shop whose payment plugin was abandoned by its author years ago.
Per-site PHP selection from the panel is what makes that survivable on one account. Set the version, toggle the extensions the site needs, and move on. Without it you are buying a second platform to house one client's inertia, and paying for it every single month.
The end-of-life account you inherited
An unpatched interpreter is attack surface with a version number on the front, and on a reseller platform the risk is not confined to the client who insisted on it. Isolation is what stops one neglected account becoming everybody's morning, which is why CloudLinux-style containment and Imunify360 on every site matter more to you than to a single-site owner.
Treat an out-of-date site as a dated liability rather than a permanent arrangement. Put a date on it, write to the client, and keep the letter. When it does go wrong, the difference between a difficult conversation and an unrecoverable one is whether you warned them in writing.
What per-site switching saves you in hours
Count the tickets you would otherwise raise: one per site every time a plugin demands a newer runtime, one per site every time an upgrade breaks something and needs putting back, and one per client every time you have to explain a delay you did not cause. Each of those is minutes off your margin.
With the version, the extensions and the per-site settings all in one panel screen, most of them stop being tickets at all. That is the whole argument — not that PHP 8 benchmarks well, but that a change you can make yourself in thirty seconds never becomes an email thread.
Telling a client their site has to move
Lead with what it costs them rather than what it offends in you. A site on an unsupported runtime cannot take security patches, will eventually stop working with its own payment provider, and is uninsurable in any meaningful sense. That is a business argument, and business arguments land.
Then make it easy: clone to staging, run the upgrade on the copy, show them the working result, and push it across. Proving an upgrade before it touches the live site turns a frightening request into a demonstration, and demonstrations get signed off.
The supplier writing this would like the account
We are a host recommending hosting and we say so rather than dressing it as research. No affiliate table, no ranking fee, and therefore no reason for the rest of the page to flatter anybody.
Mailboxes on the client's own domain come with the plan instead of appearing at checkout as an extra you then have to justify.
- Tests you can run before you commit a client
- One trade price, held at renewal
- Free migration for the sites you already host
- A refund policy with no small print
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
One account, several interpreters
PHP set per site from the panel, so a legacy client and a current build sit side by side without a second platform.
Extensions in the same screen
mysqli, PDO, gd, imagick, curl, intl, mbstring, zip, redis and the rest, toggled per site rather than requested by ticket.
Matched to this verdict
The Pro plan is this page's recommendation made concrete — one flat price, essentials included, upgradeable in place.
Isolation that limits the damage
Account separation and Imunify360 mean one neglected client site stays a problem confined to one client site.
Staging to prove an upgrade
Clone, upgrade the copy, show the client it works, then push. The version conversation stops being frightening.
A supplier with a company number
IGI Security Services Ltd, registered in England and Wales — a public record, which is what your own clients would want you to have checked.
Price Tags Compared
How we compare with the household names
Typical sign-up and renewal prices across the market, set next to ours — the second number most comparison charts leave off.
| Line item | Hosting SellerBest seller | Typical big-brand host | Typical budget host | Typical loss-leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Price at renewal / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Renewal price on the entry plan is unchanged | ||||
| SSL on every plan | ||||
| Site migration included | ||||
| The entry plan uses NVMe storage | ||||
| Entry plan gets a backup daily | ||||
| Live human support, 24/7 |
*The number in our column is the cheapest plan on our shelf, priced on an annual term and pulled live from the very catalogue that feeds the pricing page, so it cannot drift out of date. Other columns show the ranges shared hosting tends to advertise inside each bracket: introductory rates that normally ask for a one-to-four-year commitment, then climb once that term expires. Naming individual competitors and printing their prices is something we have stopped doing. A figure we cannot re-check on the day you read it has no business sitting in front of you. So compare us with whoever you are genuinely weighing up, and read the renewal line first. That line tells you more than the headline ever will.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Audit the book before you move it
List every client site and the interpreter it needs. Half an hour with a spreadsheet turns a migration into a plan and stops the first surprise arriving on cutover night.
- 2
Put a date on the stragglers
Write to the owner of every site on an unsupported runtime, name a date, and keep the correspondence. It is the cheapest insurance policy in this trade.
- 3
Upgrade on a clone, never in place
Prove it on staging, show the client the working copy, then push it live. Nobody signs off a change they have not seen, and nobody blames a change they watched work.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- PHP versions picked per site from the panel
- OPcache switched on, with the extension list a real project assumes
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- Staging copies so an upgrade is proved before it goes live
- cPanel, the panel any developer or client you deal with already knows
- Imunify360 on guard on every site in the account
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- One-click installs for WordPress and 240+ other applications
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- Upgrades applied to the account in place, with no move between plans
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Can two client sites on one account run different PHP versions?
Yes — that is the point of per-site selection. The version, the extensions and the per-site settings all live in one panel screen, so a 2016 application and a current build coexist on the same account without either being compromised to suit the other.
How do I charge for keeping a legacy site alive?
As its own line, and higher than the modern ones. A site on an unsupported runtime costs you more attention, more risk and more explaining. Pricing it the same as a current build teaches the client there is no cost to standing still, which is precisely the wrong lesson.
What actually happens if a client refuses to upgrade?
Isolation limits the blast radius to their own account and Imunify360 watches every site, but neither makes an unpatched interpreter safe. Put the warning in writing, keep it, and price the risk. That letter is what turns an eventual incident into their decision rather than your negligence.
Which control panel will my clients and contractors already know?
cPanel, which the whole trade knows, so every tutorial online matches what they see and a backup restores onto any cPanel host anywhere. Plesk and DirectAdmin are stocked on specific plans if you or a client prefer them.
Read next
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A terminal on a shared-class account, and why that matters rather more when the sites are somebody else's.
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Pick the PHP version site by site, on quick NVMe hardware.
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The panel the trade already knows, sized for resellers, WHM in the box.
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One account, every version your clients need.
Per-site PHP, staging to prove the upgrade, isolation to contain the stragglers, and a price that holds at renewal.
See PHP Hosting plans