Freelancers, do you host and maintain client websites? Why or why not?

I'm considering diving into freelancing and I've heard opinions on both sides of the fence. Just wanted to know the community's take on it. General freelancing tips are also welcomed.

Thanks!

Comments

[Nick Karnik]

I have worked as an independent consultant on and off and it wasn't until recently that I started to host client applications. It's extra income, builds some loyalty and leads to additional paid work. However, if something goes down you are responsible to ensure it comes back up. At times clients assume that it was a bug in your work and don't want to pay.

This is a nightmare when the pipeline is complex and deployments have to be on a specific cloud provider. I've started to migrate clients onto their own setup as I prefer focusing my time on building applications and getting clients up and running on their own system versus playing devops.

I had answered a few questions related to freelancing on my #AMA that you might find useful.

[Terrance Corley]

Thanks for the response, Nick! That makes sense, if I were to take on freelancing I had planned to start out targeting small business owners, particularly restaurant owners.

I don't think there would be too many complex scenarios I'd have to fix since the sites would be fairly simple in nature and providing longer term support would bring extra income, loyalty, and possibly more paid work as you said. Then again, I'm wondering if it's worth it as you mentioned because I also would prefer spending time building the websites/apps instead of maintaining them. I guess if my projects in the beginning are not too complex then having that residual income and keeping in communication with past clients (which probably leads to more word-of-mouth business), then it wouldn't be a bad idea. On the flip side of that maybe I would be better off spending that time working on new client projects as they'd be more profitable. Decisions, decisions.

Read through your AMA, a lot of great tips on there!

[Ben Halpern]

I haven’t freelanced in years, but have some thoughts.

I always found myself hosting stuff and regretting it later. I think I needed to either avoid this altogether or lean into it more as a core part of my offering. I wound up floating somewhere in the middle.

[Robin Kretzschmar]

That's my experience, too. I often started hosting websites for clients quickly just that they don't have to take care of all that stuff and don't despair.
But over time, problems occur, things break, they have new requirements and all that stuff can get out of range real quick.

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Ben,

Thanks for commenting! Yeah, based off all the responses here I think I'll leave client hosting to the experts for now.

[Daniel Coturel]

Hi Terrance,
I think developing and hosting are two very different kind of services. In developing, you don't have to worry about availability, security and continuity of a lot of things implied on hosting. This aspects require you to plan and deploy a support structure and give it some attention.
So, if you are starting, I would say don't get into hosting. It's something you could evaluate 2-3 years in the future.
Saludos,

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Daniel,

Thanks for responding! I think you're right. This seems to be the consensus based off people's answers here.

[Zack Sheppard]

I was a freelancer in my younger days and have returned to it now. When I started freelancing, I (like you) aimed to be a "one stop shop" for less tech savvy organizations. In my case, though, it was mostly artists and lawyers. I thought that I would do the hosting in addition to the design and coding of their sites and build loyal relationships and pocket a tidy margin for the hosting. However, I dropped that after about a year for a few big reasons:

1. I wasn't taking enough of a cut to make it worth my time. Unless you're going to be charging ongoing Squarespace-level prices, the overhead of staying on as an SRE for a client is unlikely to be worth any bonus you get to the relationship.
2. On top of that, I saw no bonuses to the relationships. I had hopes that it would help me close sales and help me gain repeat business from clients. The opposite happened, clients would be worried about me quitting one day and taking their site down with me. I had a much easier time selling my services when it included an account on a "reliable" hosting service that they would have the password and payment info for when we were done.
3. Finally, it actually wound up hurting my relationship with some clients. While a standard design & build contract had a defined "end" (when the site is accepted and goes live), hosting contracts never did. While this is, in theory, ok because your services should be limited to hosting after the initial build, my experience was that less technical clients didn't understand where the appropriate boundaries were. They failed to understand why I would jump into action if their site was down, but insist on charging them if they wanted me to make design tweaks. This wound up hurting the relationships that being a one-stop-shop was supposed to help and was what finally pushed me to stop pretending to be a hosting company.

All that being said, if you want to own being a hosting company (whereas I was more a design and build focused freelancer who was doing hosting as a "bonus feature"), you might be able to make it work. Just take my story as a caveat.

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Zack,

Thank you for taking the time to respond in full. All of that really resonated with me. Being a brand new freelancer myself that has had no focus in devOps or long term site maintenance, I think I'll heed by your words and stick to just building the projects and setting defined ends.

Thanks again!

[rhymes]

Nope, I've never done it before. It never occurred to me honestly to propose I host their websites. They usually have their own infrastructure or I suggest using a commercial option. I've even referred clients to WordPress specialists because of requirements that didn't need a custom made web app (or even SquareSpace) :-)

Though I would probably start exploring the option of a static website in the future, with something like Hugo

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Rhymes,

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to host either, at least not for now. Those static site generators are interesting. Might play around with Hugo or Jekyll someday myself.

[Adrian B.G.]

I would not recommend it, and usually developers don't know much sys admin/devops in order to do a proper job, especially in security and performance settings. Also you have to consider the moral and legal implications of keeping their data, visitors and clients private data, and so on.

There is also a mix, having a hosting account (AWS or whatever) and both parties have access to it, and you can take extra responsibilities on it (like setup, maintenance etc), but you will take some of the responsabilities out of you, and you can always end the contract without any complications.

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Adrian,

Yup, you're right. Because as of right now I know little to none about sys admin/devops haha. I'll stick to providing my future clients with reputable hosting solutions and focusing myself on doing my best work on the projects themselves. Thanks for commenting!

[Lavinia]

Hi! I'm not a full time freelancer, but I don't offer hosting or domains to my clients, because are little tasks that sometimes take too much time. I do offer maintainance and support for a small period of time.

[Terrance Corley]

Hi Lavinia,

Thanks for commenting! Yeah, I'm thinking of doing something like that where I offer some support for 30 days post-project that will be clearly outlined in my contracts.

[Jack Harner 🚀]

Still starting out in the freelance game (If anyone needs any WordPress work done, hit me up!) but from the couple projects I've worked on it's been easiest just to have them sign up for a Hosting package through NameCheap, or wherever, then I just have to load the site up and let their hosting provider deal with uptime and updates and security.

It'd be interesting to have some sort of auto-billing connected DigitalOcean droplets. Charge their credit card every month, if it fails try again after x amount of time, suspend the website after y days, if it keeps failing spin down the droplet after z amount of time. That way you only end up eating like 1 months worth of server costs for that one project. That way you can generate another revenue stream for your clients with only some up front time cost setting all of that up.

[Terrance Corley]

Hey Jack,

I wish I knew more about DigitalOcean processes right now haha, but having some sort of automated fail cycle based on payment does sound pretty nifty. Thanks for the response, I don't think I'll be hosting my own clients based off the consensus here.

[Jack Harner 🚀]

Ya, I have no idea how it would work either, all I know is that DigitalOcean has an API, and that Stripe has their recurring billing API. So it'd be connecting those two somehow to manage the droplets.

Definitely easier to just sign them up with someone else.

[Glenn Stovall]

" you can generate another revenue stream for your clients with only some upfront time cost setting all of that up."

I addressed this in my post, but I think this line of thinking is a trap. If there is an issue with the client's site/hosting, they are going to hold you accountable. There is an additional cost to the upfront time: the risk you take on.

[Terrance Corley]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your response! Interesting, I'll keep this in mind-- thanks!

[Jonathan Irvin]

I've done freelancing in the past and you have your pros and cons.

The pro is that if something is wrong, you can easily fix it.
The con is that if something is wrong, you can be liable for it.

Nowadays, you're better off setting the client up on their own hosting and letting them handle the billing. Most hosting providers can do several years in advance and you can include that in your initial contract. You write the code for them and they pay for the fees. If you decide to part ways in the future, it's no problem for you because they're already in possession of the code. If they decide to cut off your access, you can professionally bow out as well.