Autograph Web Hosting Agreement Template Made Easy

Countersignature web hosting agreement template

another day and Here I am driving on my daily commute to work so let's get into some traffic top [Music] what's up top my freelancers and creatives this is Nathan welcome to another episode of traffic talk traffic talk is where you ask questions I give you answers all while driving on my daily commute in Houston Texas again welcome to the show and for those who are not aware Houston has a lot of traffic I mean Houston being the fourth largest city in the u.s. in Texas things are spread out and you have to have a car to get there if you want to get anywhere on time not only that but there's a lot of people on the road a lot of people own cars so there is a lot of traffic I always say that however long you have to go so if you have to go 20 miles that's how long it'll take but if this traffic multiply that by two but if there's an accident multiply that by three so there you go so there's a lot of traffic but it created the opportunity for me to create this show and for the ability to answer questions you know and remain productive so I appreciate that and I appreciate you for watching the show and checking it out so as you saw from the episode title this episode is going to be about web hosting so where do you go to host the website but more specifically what is going to happen when a client is asking more detailed questions about web hosting so let's dive into the question and the question is from reddit user Kevin kam underscore and they say the following website hosting how to respond to clients for some context to scenarios how should I respond when offering myself as a hosting solution wilts developing a website for a client they asked me who I'm hosting through because technically if I answer they can just host it themselves for cheaper right but if I don't answer would that imply I'm forcing them to pay me for hosting the website I could offer similar services probably as a reseller but at the same time I don't want to dodge the question entirely if a client decides to choose a different hosting provider while I'm developing the website how should I react should I ask them why they are changing have you all experienced anything similar and somehow managed to turn the situation around this one particular was upsetting because I already provided a discount rate on development apologies if this is the wrong place to post this question but I'm freelancing starting now and I couldn't think of a better place to start so that's just some context on the question and really just to provide and qualify what I'm about to say I actually used to work at a hosting company I worked at a web hosting company that was one of my I think yeah major jobs coming out of undergrad undergrad college so that was one of the first places I worked and web hosting is in other words you have a website and your website files have to live somewhere on the internet and web hosting is what allows people to type in your domain name so you type in Nathan a little sitcom and then it shows you the web files that are hosted on a server somewhere and it delivers those files up so what Kevin keV is asking here is they have a client and they're building the website in a hosting environment so while they're developing and building the website they have hosting and they had planned to offer hosting services whenever the site is done and just switch them over and have the client pay Venom to host it but they're curious about what the client is saying because client is asking hey what are you hosting the website so the client could probably go get a hosting account for five dollars a month you know nine dollars a month and the person who asked the question they probably were going to charge more and just get recurring fees that way so that's the context of the question and what's going on so really like I mentioned I used to work at a hosting company and I can definitely say this all of the hosting companies that exist for the most part are reselling hosting services so there are a lot of hosting services that are using and reselling Amazon services there are a lot of hosting companies that are reselling SoftLayer you know which is a major data server warehouse there's a lot of web hosting companies that are reselling digital ocean that's another one digital ocean or some companies do build their own server data warehouse and then they sell those services but it's very rare a lot of people are just simply reselling other services so every hosting company that exists what I'll say 80% of them that exist they're just reselling another person service for those who are watching on video right now just ignore the fact that I look like a masked superhero the top part of my face is covered by a shadow in the bottom part is illuminated so I look like a superhero let's just ignore that and listen to what I'm about to say but yeah as I mentioned every company is pretty much reselling services so that is a common practice I can also say that don't get caught up in whether or not the person can get cheaper hosting because regardless of every company out there the main difference between everyone is not the server's is not how fast they are is not you know what can they do in their development environment the main difference is customer service that is the thing that separates every single hosting company that exists customer service of course they can pay for cheaper hosting but then in terms of service they're in the same group as the rest of the hundreds of thousands of other clients that that company has to answer I can definitely say I want I used to work at a hosting company I did everything for the company so I I worked in different areas for the company so I did almost everything and I can definitely say many people are multitasking when they're even giving service so they're trying to answer a ticket they're trying to talk on the phone and they're trying to talk on live chat of course you have some people who specialized they only do email tickets they only do phone they only do live chat so that's not everyone but they have to answer questions really fast and move on to the next thing I took a different stance when I worked for a hosting company I was like you know what I'm dedicated to answering the customer's question completely I'm not gonna give them some fluff answer I'm gonna dive into any question that they have and also answer things they didn't even ask me just so that you know they don't need to wait on hold or call back again so the main thing that's gonna differentiate your hosting service from all the other ones that are cheaper is the level of service you can provide you built the site so you're familiar with it you know what the site specifically needs there's a reason why you chose the host you chose in the first place and maybe it does have something to do with their server environment I can definitely say there are some web hosts who don't keep PHP you know another coding language they don't keep it up-to-date right so somebody might host a website with them and certain things don't work because they didn't update their framework or their codebase or their server to handle the codebase so those are all things that you can communicate to someone but directly answering your question I can definitely say it doesn't matter if you tell them where you're hosted at it's more important for you to tell them why you chose two particular hosts you did and how you feel as a professional that they should host with you so that they can get that priority support and so that they can get the explanation when the client has a question you want to be able to say yes to their question and by you offering web hosting services and buy them hosting through you it enables you to say yes to any questions that they have if they go through an independent host you don't know what answer they're going to get and you have to communicate that because that's the difference between somebody hosting with you and somebody hosting with another service taking a step back from focusing just on hosting in general another thing that really communicate is I'm curious that the client is even asking but what I'm what I mean by that is I hope from the beginning you were proactive in communicating that you are taking care of the web hosting and that was somewhere mentioned in your contract when I work with a lot of clients in my contract I state I do not offer hosting services I communicate to them and I say I am NOT offering hosting for development purposes I will develop your site on my own hosting but I am not offering it I will come back with a list of recommended hosts I believe you should move forward with because I just don't want to get into hosting that is something that I may need to consider I may need to consider offering hosting services because whenever there's a problem with the website the client calls me first anyway they email me anyway and then I say oh that's on the web host and they still are at a loss of what to do so there is an opportunity for me to get extra income because I can offer those hosting services because the client already trusts me but again that's something I'd have to update my contract and when I talked to the client initially and I pitch my services that should be included so if I was gonna add that in my business I would say yes I'll develop the website for you this is the cost going forward there's a recurring fee of $75 a month $50 a month $100 a month $500 a month whatever it's going to be and that is support with hosting included right so if I were to add it to my business that is what I would say that you need to pay a monthly fee for the maintenance of the website as well as the hosting environment to keep it active because like I said clients come to me anyway asking questions I might as well take advantage of it but I bring that up because based on your question I'm not sure if you cover that in the contract and it's understood you know so just dive a little deeper you know no need to be intimidated by the client or worried maybe they're asking because they're looking to save money and regardless of what service you offer they want to save money so maybe they do want to find one of those cheaper hosts but I can definitely say they will quickly discover why a cheap host is not the best so maybe they do let's just play that out right maybe they find out you're hosting with somebody they hit the service is cheaper and then they come asking you questions you say oh that's the host provider I'm here's our contact information you're gonna have to ask them and after a certain amount of those they're gonna say you know what I don't care I don't care how much it cost you know for my business to be successful I want you to be a part of the process so that's one thing I've learned in working with clients let them figure out certain things you can make recommendations as a professional but sometimes they need to see why you're making recommendations on their own I'm not saying I'm hoping for any client to fail but discovery is important when you recommend something and someone goes the cheaper route they'll finally see you were genuinely trying to help them you weren't trying to get more money out of them you know and that's just a decision that they're gonna have to make and live with a quick example there was a time where I offered services to a client to back up their site and for whatever reason they didn't want to pay me for back up right and they made a mistake of deleting everything on their website because they were switching web host they were going from one where helps to another and they purchased the things with the new web host but they forgot to transfer the files so they cancel their old account and they deleted everything so then they came to me saying please please can you restore the site and I was like you know what I don't have a backup well I didn't say that let me correct myself I said mmm remember when I asked you if you wanted to get back up you said no and it was at that point you know the client realized wow I finally understand why Nathan emphasized backups for situations like this now in that client's case I told them I have files and things backed up but it wasn't the most recent version because you didn't pay for things going forward I did back it up so I have certain things that were on your site but a lot of things they added on their own I didn't have and then they were ok with that because that was better than zero and so they paid me for that and I was able to restore their site but that's an example let clients make decisions it's about now you as a professional you make the decisions that will make the client the most successful however if it's trying to save money or pull things back or they don't want to buy certain things from you because they're trying to save money that's on them but they fully have to understand the risk involved and that's where you come in as a professional you tell them the risk you tell them what's going on if they still choose to do it you know it's on them you just have to be a mature professional and allow them to discover that on their own because experience is the best teacher thank you for taking the time to check out this episode I greatly appreciate it I am still in route on my commute so I'm not at my destination yet but I feel like I've definitely answered that question specifically and I can go into more detail with that but just to sum everything up again it's okay to tell them where you hosted it at because you need to position yourself on the client services you're offering not the price so don't get caught up in comparing your pricing to another web host pricing you're not offering hosting services because everyone can do that you're offering customer service and your service is more independent more detailed more custom more specific to your client's needs than any general host out there who exists and remember add that type of language to your contract and talk about that up front if that is something you want to offer clients going forward and as I mentioned as well 80% of our web hosts are reselling anyway so it's not a secret even where I host my sites I know who they're really hosting with but the reason I'm using them is their customer service because I ask them a question and they immediately answer that's why I'm hosting with them it has nothing to do with the environment I can buy a server and host all my websites on there but now I have to upkeep the server environment right so I'm hosting for customer service and I believe the play you should do with your client and the play you should communicate is service not hosting prices if you have a question similar to what was asked today or anything different feel free to reach out to me I can go to Nathan little take on click on podcast you'll see traffic talk select traffic talk and ask me that way another way is you can simply ask a question on social media hit me up on Twitter at Nathan Lotte however you want to get me the question I don't care if it's Facebook Twitter or YouTube comments give me a question and I'll work it into the show and make sure to provide an answer well thank you for checking us out and I will catch you in the next one see you you