How much to charge a client for hosting their website on my webserver?

Question

I'm currently working on a small web application for someone. They are on a relatively tight budget most of which is paying for the time that I'm spending developing the project for them.

They are going to need some web space for the project. The site is small enough and will utilize a small amount of bandwidth so I don't mind setting up an add-on domain pointing to a directory on my server in order to save them some money; however, since I am still paying for the web server out of my own pocket, the client should have to pay some form of a monthly (or yearly) fee for the space, but I'm having a hard time coming up with pricing.

Generally speaking, I'm thinking of simply determining how much money I pay per gigabyte and then charge the client for however many gigs he will be using. Additionally, I'm also considering bandwidth and the initial cost of the domain.

Are there other issues I should consider when pricing hosting for the client?

Answer 1

The support. Downtime and other problems that may arise that they would talk to their hosting provider about and not to their developer. Sadly they are both the same person now!

That's extra time and worries that you should price as well.

Answer 2

If it's a PHP/MySQL website, you could host it on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET and have your client pay for what they use. Since NFSN's storage and bandwidth prices are a little high, you could put static files on Amazon S3. This combination is working well for me at the moment, and small sites hardly cost anything.

Answer 3

Why charge them? If they're a good, reasonable, paying client, and your hosting is cheap, you've got their loyalty for free. That's surely worth it.

If there might be support issues, as Vinko says, make sure that you can charge for those as they come up.

Answer 4

I'd think twice about doing that at all, backups and support will take some time to handle. Larger hosting services have all this nicely automated, and you could do this too, but they've got a whole other volume for the same amount of setup work. So you'd have to take on more hosting to recoup that invested time.

If the site's as small as you say some cheap hosting (dreamhost maybe?) should do the trick nicely and rid you of any long running maintenance.

Answer 5

Although client loyalty is what we all want, we should never underprice our services. There are a few cool articles down @ http://freelanceswitch.com you should check out:

http://freelanceswitch.com/productivity/bad-habits-8-ways-freelancers-disrespect-their-own-time/

http://freelanceswitch.com/clients/8-things-you-should-include-in-your-terms-of-service-agreement/

http://freelanceswitch.com/money/when-one-rate-does-not-fit-all-negotiating-with-clients-that-want-all-in-one-fees/

Hope it helps.

Bruno Figueiredo http://www.brunofigueiredo.com

Answer 6

You could always become a re-seller for another company and then bill the client monthly or quarterly.

http://www.appliedi.net/reseller-hosting/

The benefit for the customer, although they are paying more for hosting, is that they have you available to talk to them about their site - that you created and are familiar with.

This can also help keep you in the loop for future changes. When work is slow those annoying maintence changes and hosting charges rolling in can really add up.

I purchased a dedicated server that I sell hosting on to my customers only and it really helps keep the lights on if I have a slow month, and they like having someone they know to talk to about something they really don't understand. The warm and fuzzy the customer gets from this almost always out weighs the additional cost.

Answer 7

I've ran my own web development business for a while, and I've worked at a fortune 500 company that had a marketing department that hosted small scale web applications... the pricing model I would suggest for your case is simple.

Fixed, dollar amount... round up for what you pay.

Example: If you are paying $9.95 monthly for hosting... charge them either $10 if your generous, or $20 if your semi-generous.

I use GearHost for SingingEels.com which I pay $20 a month for hosting. With that package, I can have 10 domains on the same server. So $20x10 = 200 = yay :)