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Looking for a side hobby/project of freelance web development as i am currently in university trying to make some extra cash.

So my question is:

When a client comes to me for a website should i set up an individual cheap hosting for 1 website only or purchase a more expensive hosting package and host multiple client sites on the same hosting package.

Would using a reseller account such as Hostgator's alumiunium/copper package with unlimited domains support this requirement or are there more suitable packages to support/host several websites on a single account?

I am confused as to how most people manage this or whether they just ask their client to set up their own hosting if they are technically skilled enough to do so.

Damil
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  • I think a lot of people find it a good way to produce steady, ongoing income to do hosting or hosting management i.e. you buy the hosting for them and charge a mark up for taking care of this. What you don't want is to have to learn the ins and outs of multiple different hosts (each one is different in important ways), you want as many clients as possible on one high quality host that you know well. A lot of the money in doing freelance work is in the maintenance where most of the time you are just watching for alerts indicating a problem. – Elin Mar 18 '15 at 05:32
  • +1 for a good question - but I am not so sure that it is a good question for **this** site. It might have been better asked on http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ – Mawg says reinstate Monica Mar 18 '15 at 09:01
  • They ask the client, "host your own, I'll setup separate hosting or do you mind using my reseller account so you get a discount?" – JeffO Mar 18 '15 at 16:14

1 Answers1

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First thing first I would not recommend Hostgator as their service has become horrendous - they used to be good. Not anymore. Just my personal opinion from my experience.

As for managing your clients I would say that hosting their websites is not really a good idea because:

1) You automatically take on more responsibility: If one of your clients installs a vulnerable plugin and it gets hacked then all of your other client's websites are in danger as well since it is all shared. Just one example and there are many more.

2) Maintenance becomes a lot harder as the number of clients grows.

3) Most of the time you will have to use your resources sparingly hence you will only be able to provide them with less resources than if they got their own account.

The only good part about this is that as a reseller you can have the subscriptions go to you and if you collect enough clients it can pay off your subscription fee + bring in more money (this being a side business).

I have done this myself and found out that it was a lot of headache especially if you don't have as many clients to get at least a reasonable amount of money back.

As to how to approach them about getting their account set up I would say meet up with them face to face and help them go through the registration process.

If you cannot meet them then do a Skype session and share screens then walk them through.

But the bottom line is that I definitely recommend decoupling your clients from each other and letting them have their own hosting providers.

AvetisCodes
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