Questions about Hosting customers' ASP.NET sites

Question

Where do you host your customers' ASP.NET sites? I am about to develop a few sites, and I am looking for a good place to host (cheap, fast, good bandwidth, good storage, updates, service packs, etc.)

I have also thought about earning revenue for the hosting/domain, even though I am not actually hosting it (kinda sounds bad when you put it out there). Basically, I would just handle the hosting/domain costs and bill the customer, with a bit of markup. They wont know anything about the host, unless they go digging. Does anyone else incorporate this into their business model? What are the pros/cons?

Answer 1

I like webhost4life. I've tried hosting customer stuff -- you can't charge them enough to deal with the pain. It's much better to give it up to somebody else to deal with the bandwidth and SLAs.

Answer 2

Peer1 is a bit expensive but offers an excellent support when something goes wrong (DNS, email, dabase, service pack...). They help you configure your server and take care of security aspects (amongmany others).

I also use ServerBeach (Peer1's little brother), its self-managed hosting which means you have to take care yourself of the security, the server's configuration, the service packs,... more flexible and less expensive. Support is also excellent.

Answer 3

I've used Brinkster for several years & never had any unplanned outages or any real problems. Keep in mind that the sites I've worked on aren't high-volume sites (local restaurants, etc) so I haven't really pushed the envelope bandwidth-wise. Pricing is good & support has always helped me out when I needed it.

A note on marking up hosting...I'm a one-person shop & I tried this once (for a short time), and regretted it immediately. Every tiny email issue, Outlook configuration setting, etc. will result in a customer phone call to you. YMMV, but the markup was never profitable or worthwhile for me personally.