

Ask HN: Best cheap hosting for a low traffic local business? - tontoa4

I've been building some websites lately for small local businesses that want an internet presence. For simplicity, I have the clients register the domain and pay for the hosting themselves. Where should I direct them to buy the hosting?<p>Thanks all. 
Nick
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mseebach
Don't let clients anywhere near their own domains and hosting.

Before you know it, you're drenched in trouble, trying to get some hack-cheap-
registrar to unlock domains or whatever, while the client is desperate because
his e-mail doesn't work, or figuring out why the website broke, only to find
out the boss's nephew tried to install a BT tracker on the site, and by the
way, no, he doesn't have a backup, didn't you take care of that?

Get a small VPS at SliceHost and host the sites yourself. Forward their e-mail
to GMail accounts, or setup apps for your domain. Charge $20 a month, paid a
year in advance. One billing round a year, if it takes you more than half a
morning, you're doing it wrong.

The only point of contact the client has is you, the only bill he gets is from
you, and you're pretty soon pocketing a few $100 a month simply by not
screwing up the server.

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compay
I've been down this road before and I agree with everything said here. Just to
clarify something, I think mseebach meant that you should charge $20/month for
_yourself_ \- and have the company pay for the Slicehost account. The smallest
slice on SH is $20/mo so if you don't do that you won't be getting any
compensation.

~~~
mseebach
No, I meant charge $20 for everything from the client, and host them all on
the same slice. A 256 vps easily hosts 10s of low traffic sites. Local
business usually means mostly static, and on the scale of dozens of visits a
week.

~~~
compay
Ah, ok - right on.

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redrobot5050
Make sure the client knows what they're doing with regards to a web presence:
E.g. they can manage e-mail / hosting set ups. If they don't, they're likely
to get burned, even with your advice.

I would advise getting a small VPS from Slicehost. Set it up so that it
automatically backs up (they charge like $5/month to do machine replication,
but having an always-ready-to-go daily backup of your client's machine should
be a closer).

If you're going to go for old-school hobbyist shared-hosting, I'd suggest
Myhosting.com or <http://www.nobullshithosting.com/>

I'd also advise you to stay away from Dreamhost.com. Their servers have
terrible bandwidth, lose emails, and their TOS is ridiculously restrictive to
the point where they can justify closing your account for any reason -- the
primary one being that you're actually costing them more they're paying (e.g.
using more than half the "promised" 500GBs of space their $9.99/month account
gives you).

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mikeyur
I tend to point any clients that want low cost hosting towards GeekStorage.com
- they have a $35/yr plan. Another is A Small Orange, but I have had much more
problems with ASO than I have with GeekStorage.

If you're looking for something 'beefier' - I'm currently with WebFaction.com
- awesome guys, great if you need some cheap hosting for your Django/Rails
apps (and don't want to pay for a VPS)

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RobGR
All the cheap hosting places suck. Dealing with the customer and the non-
responsive $5 / mo hosting place takes more time and effort than just hosting
it yourself.

If they are truly low traffic, just host them yourself on a business class
connection. You can pack a lot of low traffic websites on one machine.
Graphics will load slowly unless you pay for more bandwidth, and you have to
do your own backups, of course. Have your customers buy the domain themselves,
but then have them log into godaddy or whoever they used and do the setup
yourself.

Should the business relationship end, they control the domain and can just
point it somewhere else, and you can mail their backup to them on a CD, and
thus not be accused of holding anything hostage.

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pg
Why not Weebly?

~~~
tontoa4
Forgot about weebly, I've been on the site before but didn't think about it
because I associated it amateur sites. Can you paste your own html?

~~~
chris
We currently have the ability to upload your own theme and customize existing
themes, in development. Shoot me an email, chris (at) weebly.com, and I'll
give you access. Otherwise, this feature should be live early next week =)

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silvestrov
Whoever you choose, make sure you always have an up-to-date local backup of
everything on the site. Cheap webhosting is prone to loosing customer files
when something goes wrong.

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theklub
I use Apisnetworks.com. You can add as many domains as you want to one
account. Servers are fast and I haven't had any problems with them.

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pclark
A Small Orange are great :)

