Jack of All Trades, Master of None!

Not really! In todays era of professionalism, you can actually play Master of all trades. The key lies in broadening the range of your services and catering to your customers with all that they need under one roof.

Especially so, in case of web services, clients often look out for vendors who offer all the services related to the project. Generally it happens that when customers are looking for web design services, they are also looking for hosting platforms for the websites. As a web design and development firm, you would need to understand the requirements of your clients regarding domain names and web hosting.

If they are hiring you for the design and development needs, they would really not think twice before buying the hosting from you as well.

How to become a Web Host
Virtual Private Server
You can host your clients' websites from your own site's Virtual Private Server (VPS). This will give you double the advantages with only single investments. However, this may work well when you are working with a couple of clients. If your business is growing and more and more websites are being added, hosting them all would be an infeasible thing for your dedicated server.

Reseller Hosting
You can hire suppliers for reseller hosting. The specialist solutions provide you with a specially build environment for the setting-up and management of the hosting accounts of your clients. They build tiered hosting plans and automate the emails etc. Make sure that the reseller package that you choose enables you to make adjustments and changes as and when you require so that the clients never get to know that their websites are hosted with someone else.

Here are some tips to choose reseller hosting:

Check if your host has any limitations on the web space, traffic, emails and database that you can resell.
Check if they offer both Linux and Windows accounts
Ask them what programs do they provide that you can further offer to your clients.

How to Charge your Clients?

Charges for your web hosting services should be based on 3 factors:

Cost investments at your end
Price sensitivity of your customer base
Pricing structure of local competitors

You may also offer discounts and bonuses. For example, you can offer discounted rates for customers who pay for the whole year in advance or you can offer bulk your service together and then offer a total rate.

When you have formally set up hosting as your services, try to cash in on your existing clients. Since they already have their websites designed by you, they would preferably want to have their hosting with you as well. You may even offer to do the transfer handling that is involved.

How to Support your Clients
Unlike website design and development, where you create a website once and provide it to the client, web hosting is an ongoing process. Be very clear about the kind and level of support that you can offer to your clients. This prevents any undue expectations and subsequent issues regarding the same. And when you commit be ready to fulfill the commitment. Your clients can have any number of issues and you would have to provide them with solutions.