Expanding Your WordPress Business: The Benefits of Offering Hosting Services
In the world of WordPress development, there is a growing conversation about how freelancers and businesses can operate more efficiently and increase profitability. As a developer doing client work, there are several ways you can add value to your services and generate recurring revenue. One such opportunity is offering hosting services to your clients.
Why Offer Hosting Services?
When you build a website for a client, your work doesn’t have to end once the project is complete. By offering to take care of the hosting for your clients, you can generate recurring revenue from the same client. This is a service that you know they need, so why not provide it?
You may be thinking that you don’t know enough about hosting or that supporting hosting clients will be too time-consuming. However, these concerns can be easily addressed.
Simplifying Hosting Services
You don’t need to be an expert in hosting to offer this service. Many WordPress-specific hosting providers, such as WP Engine or Flywheel, handle all the technical aspects of hosting for you. They take care of tasks like installing WordPress properly, managing backups, updating WordPress core, and ensuring security.
Support is also taken care of by the hosting provider, so you don’t need to provide direct support to your clients. Your role as a developer is to add value by managing plugin and theme updates and performing routine checks on backups.
Avoid Email Hosting
While offering hosting services can be beneficial, it’s important to avoid offering email hosting. Hosting email can be time-consuming and often requires configuring desktop mail clients and smartphones. Instead, refer your clients to dedicated email offerings like Google’s WorkPlace. This way, you can focus on providing quality hosting services without getting bogged down in email support.
Financial Considerations
Let’s look at a quick example to understand the financial benefits of offering hosting services. Consider a mid-tier product like WP Engine’s Professional level, which costs around $117 per month for 10 WordPress installs. If you bundle this with a management service like ManageWP or Infinitewp, you could charge around $500 annually to a client. With 10 sites installed, this would generate a total revenue of $5000 and a profit of $3600 or more.
To maximize profitability, you can also explore using a WordPress multisite installation for lower traffic sites. While this may require additional skills, it can further enhance the financial benefits of offering hosting services.
The Benefits of Quality Hosting
By offering hosting services, you have the opportunity to place your clients’ websites on quality hosting setups specifically optimized for WordPress. This ensures better performance and easier management for both you and your clients in the long run.
In conclusion, offering hosting services can be a valuable addition to your WordPress business. It allows you to generate recurring revenue from existing clients and provides an opportunity to offer quality hosting solutions. By leveraging WordPress-specific hosting providers and management services, you can streamline the process and focus on adding value to your clients’ websites. Just remember to avoid offering email hosting to minimize support time and effort. So why not take advantage of this low-hanging fruit and expand your business today?
