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Business

Posted by Paul HP
Paul HP
202 Points

Hosting your client's website.

Can you charge your clients $5/month for you to host the website you built for them, yet you are hosting their sites in a shared hosting plan which costs you about $15/month. In other words, say you have 10 clients paying you a total of $50/month to host all their websites collectively and you only pay $15/month hosting them all. Is this a legal or good business practice?

4 Answers

Quentin Moss
Quentin Moss
1,914 Points
Quentin Moss
Quentin Moss
1,914 Points

Yes. What you're talking about is reselling. Some companies offer affiliate programs.

Take a look at RackSpace, or Softlayer.

http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/partners/

Please keep in mind, if you're managing the backend this is something that you don't want to do until you fully understand system administration.

samiff
samiff
31,206 Points
samiff
samiff
31,206 Points

Your clients pay exactly whatever you agreed upon in a contract. The hosting provider could have a terms of service contract that would prevent you from reselling/repackaging services, but that would be on a case by case basis.

Christer Nordbø
Christer Nordbø
2,133 Points
Christer Nordbø
Christer Nordbø
2,133 Points

What Sam said!

As long as your hosting, you could check what the other suppliers charge for individual accounts and do your estimate out of that.

Have a look at the Godaddy's prices: http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx?isc=gfnn4no01&ci=76393

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

@Paul - The most important thing to know about reselling web hosting is that your clients will call you, when they have an issue.

You have essentially become the face of the hosting company you are re-selling, your reputation now depends on this other company, so choose wisely.