When you're freelancing or managing your own full stack website, what are your go-to hosting options? More specifically, where do you usually host full stack projects for your clients, and what should clients expect in terms of payment? How do you handle billing—do you inform them about monthly or yearly hosting fees that will be separate from your development charges? Additionally, do you prefer to request full payment upfront, or do you consider down payments or installment plans? Looking for insights from fellow developers!
3 Answers
For my projects, I often go with GitHub Pages or set up AWS with Route 53, CloudFront, and S3 for the front end. For back end, I use AWS too with Lambda or ECS, depending on the project. If I charged for hosting, I’d think about around $97 a month for support, but I haven’t really done that yet!
I used to depend entirely on AWS, but I recently switched to Vercel for my full stack projects that don’t need to scale massively. It's been a smooth experience!
I usually go for a Linux VPS with providers like Hetzner or Digital Ocean. I recommend setting it up with security basics and then offering clients the option to manage it themselves, or I charge a monthly maintenance fee. If it's just a simple static site, I say go for Netlify's free tier!
Netlify's free tier is fantastic for small projects! You get a lot without spending a dime.