Reselling hosting as a web designer in the UK

Sooner or later a client asks, “Can you just look after the hosting too?” It sounds like a small favour. It is actually a decision about what kind of business you run. Reselling hosting as a web designer in the UK can bring in steady monthly income, and it can also tie you to a 2am phone call about a site that has gone down.

Neither outcome is guaranteed. What matters is being clear about what you are agreeing to before the first invoice goes out.

What reselling hosting really means

You buy hosting from a provider, put your client's site on it, and charge the client a monthly or annual fee that covers the provider's cost plus something for you. The client pays you, not the host.

The margin is the visible part. The less visible part is that you have become the first point of contact for anything that touches the site being online. If the site is slow, the client rings you. If the domain lapses, the client rings you. If the host has an outage, the client still rings you, and the host is not in the conversation.

The case for doing it

• Recurring income. A small monthly fee per site is modest on its own, but it adds up across a client list and smooths out the gaps between projects. It pairs naturally with the kind of maintenance work we describe in web design retainers in the UK.
• Control. You know where the site lives, who has access and what is installed. Updates, backups and fixes are easier when you are not waiting for a client to dig out a login from an old email.
• Fewer handover problems. A surprising number of local business sites sit on an account that nobody can find. When you hold the hosting, that particular headache is yours to prevent.

The case against

• You carry the responsibility. Clients do not distinguish between your work and your supplier's. A bad week at the host is a bad week for you.
• Support time is not free. If the fee you charge does not cover the hours you spend on small requests, the margin quietly disappears.
• Lock-in resentment. If a client feels trapped on your hosting, the relationship sours the day they want to leave.
• Data and security duties. If you host a client's site you may be handling personal data on their behalf, for example enquiry form submissions. That is worth understanding properly, and the ICO's guidance on processors is the place to start rather than a blog post.

A middle route: manage it, do not own it

There is a third option that suits many freelancers. The client buys the hosting and the domain in their own name, and you are added as a user to manage it. You can charge a management fee for the time, and the client can always see what they are paying for and walk away with everything if they choose to.

You still do the hands-on work, but you are not reselling a product or guaranteeing someone else's uptime. For clients who worry about being locked in, this tends to be an easier sell. It also means a lapsed payment on your side does not take their website offline.

Questions to settle before you resell

1. What happens if the site goes down out of hours, and what have you told the client to expect?
2. Who owns the domain? It should be the client, even if you manage it.
3. What does the monthly fee include: backups, updates, small text changes, security checks? Write it down.
4. How does a client leave? Agree in advance how long a handover takes and whether it costs anything.
5. Does your contract say who is responsible if the host fails? A paragraph in your terms is far cheaper than an argument later.

Many of the problems described in the domain and hosting problems that take a website down come from exactly these gaps, such as nobody knowing who pays for what or when it renews.

Pricing it sensibly

Do not price hosting as a cost line alone. Price the responsibility. If a small plumber's site in Swindon needs very little attention, the fee can be low. A busy restaurant in Leeds that takes bookings through its site needs faster responses, so the fee and the service level should reflect it. Treat hosting as one line inside a wider care plan rather than a standalone product, and review the fee each year.

Finding clients who need this

Hosting and care plans are an easy conversation with businesses whose sites look neglected: an expired certificate, a plugin nobody has touched, a contact form that no longer sends. Patchscout can search a business type in a UK town, audit each site it finds and show you which ones have the signs of an unmanaged setup, so your first email can point to something real. Our system drafts that email in your own voice, and you send it from your own mailbox.

Whether you resell hosting, manage it or leave it to the client, the sensible rule is the same. Decide what you are on the hook for, write it down, and charge for it.