Web Designers - Where do you host your client's websites?
Hey IH's!
A question for web designers & developers, where do you host all of your client websites? Also, what do you like about them? And do you ever search for something better?
Cheers :)
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Netlify for static sites. If a Wordpress site, I use Laravel forge to provision sites on digital ocean. Super fast setup and not messing with certs and databases is nice. -Web developer at a marketing company here.
Do you host multiple websites on the same DO droplet?
Oh yea! I’ve had 10 WordPress sites on a single $5/month droplet before. Some sites are a little heavier and have more traffic so I adjust accordingly. I use manageWP to make backups, send reports etc.
I normally just throw it up on a cheap AWS Lightsail server, then serve it via AWS CloudFront (So it loads super fast and can take lots of traffic).
If I need something with more interactivity, I get my client to pay for Heroku.
Interesting. . . I haven't used Lightsail before so will give that a try.
I'd recommend it, they have a bunch of server templates so you can get setup with the right settings without to much effort.
DigitalOcean all the way. IDK why, just used to it.
Netlify for any sites created on static site generators (mostly just old sites)
Digital Ocean + Laravel Forge for any other client sites. They setup their own Digital Ocean account, add me in and I add a token from their account to Forge and deploy their site that way.
Webflow - More expensive, but the easiest to use for less technical clients
Netlify - Cheap and powerful for static sites
Digital Ocean/Heroku - Web apps
Github Pages - Used to use this for personal projects, but it seems like Netlify mostly does what I'd use this for?
Firebase
Usually on a DigitalOcean droplet
Do you usually charge a "Hosting & Maintenance fee" to your clients or just stand them up and hand it over?
Yep, we charge a hosting fee to clients. We host our bigger client websites on DigitalOcean as we prefer the scalability that DO gives.
I'm a UI/UX designer, and I exclusively develop websites with Webflow - and host them there as well. It's not the cheapest of options, but the features easily outweight that (security, powerful CMS, editor, one click to publish etc) and all clients seem to be happy with the choice.
Lightsail
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
Ah yes, love Heroku. Never thought to use it for client websites 🤔