Ask HN: Charging for hosting on freelance projects

[amargherio]

Hey HN,

When doing side work, do you offer hosting as part of your services? If so, howuch do you charge annually and how do you calculate it? I have a few side jobs that I host. I charged flat rate since they were simple websites that didn't need anything other than static content. However now I'm considering charging for hosting and domain renewal, since I'm eating those costs annually. I use the VPS for hosting my own projects, but I'd like to recoup the costs of the domain and at least some of the hosting costs. I'm new to side work and freelancing, so I'm trying to figure out how everyone else is handling it.

[jeffmould]

From my personal experience, I always offered the customer a choice upfront whether they wanted me to provide a hosting solution or if they already had a solution. This was a piece of the contract that was stated at the start.

If they wanted me to provide a solution, it really came down to what I was building and the amount of traffic anticipated. Most of the time I would set them up on a separate hosting plan, and on rare occasions I would host multiple sites on the same server. I would then up charge the hosting to them. So for example, I may have a single Linode account, and for each customer just add a new $20 VPS under that account. I would then charge the customer $35-40 a month to "manage" the server. Server management is really not that time consuming and you can script most of it. The up charge also allowed me to cover customers who may be late with payment from time to time. If down the road, the customer wanted to leave, I can just delete the server from my account. Even if I was hosting multiple sites on the same VPS I may provide a discount (i.e. may only charge the customer $15-20 a month), but hosting was always a revenue stream. You should never be eating the hosting costs though.

[amargherio]

Thanks for the reply; it's given me quite a bit to think through. I think I'll implement some part of this system and either charge recurring for hosting and domain or transfer them to hosting and domain renewal charged to them, their choice.

Spinning up a new Linode for their level of use is overkill, but I'd like to go through the effort to keep my personal VPS, well, personal.

[MichaelCrawford]

Im not in that line of work but I do know it is commonly done.

To the extent you can, register the domain as your own. Dont transfer it to your client until you have bern paid for your final invoice.