Do you host your clients?

[aaron118]

How do you deal with your clients in reguards to hosting. Its just I have a couple of jobs coming up. Do you host them yourself or just point them into the right direction of a good host and use them?

Thanks

[EastCoast]

Depends on the technical requirements, service provided and likely support level needed. Sometimes if you know that the client is likely to spend hours on the phone asking about configuring ftp, outlook, how to click stuff in a control panel i.e they need a lot of hand holding, then it's not worth it unless they have an additional support contract that covers the extra workload, it's best to use a 3rd party that will deal with secondary support issues.

Other times, if the client is likely to source unsuitable or plain cheap rubbish hosting by themselves that will hinder a project, then you're better to supply a good provision yourself to ensure ongoing performance of the site. Many clients will want hosting as part of the overall service you are offering them, and won't want to deal with a seperate supplier for their website hosting.

[dklynn]

A good answer but, as for me, I value my product (websites) and prefer to act as their host in addition to developing their websites so I can be assured of server features.

Yes, support IS required and paid on an accrual basis. I specialize in writing backends which allow clients to update their own websites (limiting my "secretarial work" for them) and that tends to keep the nonsense down, too.

On the rare occasion of a problem, they (and I) know who the responsible party is: No time wasted finger-pointing! I take care of them and they pay the bills for what WE believe are beautiful and functional websites.

Regards,

DK

[yangyang]

I'd host them. It's another good chance to rip them off.

Kidding...lol

But that said, expanding into the entire business chain can be good in many ways for the development of your company.

[messa]

I'd say that for most people the best option would be to suggest a quality host and see if you can get a referral fee on it.

Depending on your situation you could be getting in way over your head. Running a hosting business is more demanding than almost anyone getting into it thinks.

[aaron118]

So im thinking of buying a reseller hosting account then, would that be the right path?

Thanks

[dklynn]

aaron,

Be very wary of a reseller account as it's on a shared server and that WILL (it did for me) cause my (and my clients) to be blacklisted because other users were spamming. I moved to a VPS to eliminate this problem (the EXIM server is MINE).

Regards,

DK