Anybody here run a web design businees? I have a question for you?

[carlg]

I am in the process of starting my own web design company. I have Virtual Private Server that I rent from a web host. I have one of my own sites hosted thru this server. I can host multiple domains from this server.

When I create a site for a customer, I also want to handle the hosting for my customer so I can collect a monthly fee. This way the customer does not have to worry about setting up domains, hosting, etc. I would take care of all of that stuff.

Would it be a typical thing for me to just put my customers site on my VPS? And point their domain to my VPS and then charge them a monthly hosting/maintenance fee?

What about domains? Should I keep the customer's domain name in my name under my account so I can maintain it for them and just give them a contract or something that says that if they stop using my service, they can take the domain?

How do you set up these things in your business?

 

Thanks for the help

Carl

 

[zq29]

I started out hosting my clients sites on a VPS, though, now as a business we host them on one of a number of dedicated servers. Starting out, a VPS should be fine.

 

My advice is to get the customer to register their domain and then give you access to their account so that you can set it up. I started out managing my clients domain names and then billing it on, but as you get more clients, and some with more than one domain, the administration in both looking after the domain, paying for them, and then billing it on is a bit of a hassle and is quite time consuming. Also, a domain name is a company asset, it should be owned by the company.