I'm considering offering website hosting services for the sites I build for customers, along with support. For those who have experience managing hosting for multiple clients, what should I expect? I'd love to hear about any common issues or regular tasks you deal with.
5 Answers
Offering hosting can be fairly straightforward, but you have to set boundaries. Not all clients will be high maintenance, but expect some will want frequent changes. If you establish clear expectations, both sides will benefit. A good strategy is to include a small amount of work in the hosting plan while making major changes separate and billable. Just think carefully about the kind of clients and platforms you take on.
Really good points! Thanks for the insight.
When managing hosting and maintenance, I charge clients based on how time-consuming their needs are. For a static WordPress site, I might estimate about two hours of work a month, including backups and updates. I also set up tools like UptimeRobot for monitoring and have an external backup solution. Just make sure to have clear documentation for your clients on how to reach out for support. I’ve found it pays off to mitigate attacks by moving all clients to a free Cloudflare plan as well.
Thanks for these details! Do clients tend to request changes frequently?
This is super helpful! I’ll definitely keep my services organized.
I really enjoy it! I'm hosting over 100 domains across a couple of VPSs and charging around €150-200 a year per client. It’s great passive income, but you have to stay on top of requests and potentially cranky clients, especially if something goes wrong on the server-side.
What are your actual costs for that setup?
Sounds good! Any tips for keeping the workload manageable?
I host all my client sites as part of a managed service. I don't just sell hosting—I include maintenance for free as long as my projects don’t require dedicated infrastructure. It's super efficient; I can push code to production in just about 10 seconds! Clients don’t have access to the server directly, but they manage their CMS. In three years, I’ve had maybe one stability issue. Keeping things simple really works.
That sounds great! What do you typically charge?
Yeah, that’s a solid setup! Have clients ever requested changes to their sites?
All my client sites are simple static ones hosted on a CDN, with a self-hosted CMS. Clients rarely need to edit their sites, and when they do, it’s simple and doesn’t require much from me. I charge a monthly fee, and I’ve found that clients prefer having me handle the email setup as well, even if it means they pay their provider directly.
What email providers do you recommend?
Sounds like a slick setup! Thanks for sharing!
That makes sense! I'll likely keep requests separate.