I’ve been developing websites for myself for the past 6 or 7 years. Now I’m ready to start developing for clients. I’m pretty experienced with virtual hosting and dedicated servers. However, figuring out how to setup the client with hosting seems to be the most complicated part of this to me. Especially if the client has no knowledge of hosting.
For the experienced professionals out there, what hosting options do you give your clients and how do you charge them?
Do you up-sale on a hosting company you already know and trust?
Do you setup the hosting account for your client? How do you take payment for this?
Or do you host the site yourself?
And again how do you charge a client for this?
What are the pros and cons of these options?
For the experienced professionals out there, what hosting options do you give your clients and how do you charge them?
I normally base the hosting choice on their website and project needs. Rather than offer them a wide variety of confusing options I sum up their sites needs and calculate the right package for what they require. It’s better to make an informed decision when you’re the one who made the project so best understand it’s needs.
Do you up-sale on a hosting company you already know and trust?
I don’t up-sell, but I do charge a maintenance fee for the general upkeep of the site on top of the hosting (general fixing bugs, problem solving, etc), seems fair to me.
Do you setup the hosting account for your client? How do you take payment for this?
Yes, I generally do, however if the client has been dodgy with payments I don’t tend to offer hosting and just pass the project unto them to deal with (better than chase payments for the rest of my life). I always go between two hosts… a budget host (for basic sites) and a premium host (for more heavy projects).
We have web designer friends who are registering domains on the name of clients and then opening a web hosting account for that domain on the name of client. Thus client is legal owner of the domain and responcible for the domain and hosting account. Some of the developers are purchasing dedicated IP as well because this is required for ssl and safe transactions. One of my friend is charging $110/client (donain $10 + Hosting $10 + dedicated ip $50 + profit $10 + ssl $30) for this apart of developing fee.
You may want to look into a reseller plan with end user support. That way you can resell the hosting to your clients at a markup and make some extra money.
