Where should web designers host client websites?

The four ways to host a client's website

Most designers end up with one of four setups. Each one shares out ownership, cost and responsibility differently, so pick on purpose rather than by habit.

1. The client's own hosting account

The client signs up with the host, puts their own card on file, and invites you as a member or collaborator. You deploy and maintain the site from inside their account.

• Good for: clients who want full control, and designers who don't want to carry anyone's bills.
• Watch for: clients who never log in, miss a card expiry, or remove your access by accident. Some platforms charge per team member, so check who pays for your seat. On Vercel Pro, for example, each developer seat is US$20 a month at the time of writing (October 2026).

2. Your own account

You host every client site in your agency's account and pay one bill. It's the easiest to manage day to day, and the hardest to unwind when a client leaves.

• Good for: small sites you look after closely, where you bundle hosting into a monthly care plan.
• Watch for: the platform's terms (some free plans ban this outright, covered below), shared usage limits across all your clients, and the handover when a client wants to move. If the domain is also in your name, the client can't leave without you, which is the root of many disputes. Our guide on what to do when a web designer won't give access shows the client's side of that problem.

3. Reseller or white-label hosting

You buy hosting wholesale and sell it on under your own brand, often with a control panel that shows your logo. This is common for WordPress and other PHP sites on traditional shared hosting.

• Good for: agencies with many similar sites that want hosting as a product line.
• Watch for: you become the hosting company in your client's eyes. You carry the support load, the outages and the security incidents, and the upstream provider's terms still apply to you. Read them for clauses on reselling. Cloudflare's self-serve agreement, for instance, says you may not sell access to its services to a third party or sign up on behalf of one, unless Cloudflare permits it in writing.

4. A managed host that bills the client directly

A hosting company takes over the running of the site and invoices the client itself. You hand the site over, keep working on the code if you want to, and step out of billing. Some of these hosts pay the referring designer a share of the fee.

• Good for: designers who want clients looked after without becoming a hosting business, and clients who want one company responsible for uptime, security and small edits.
• Watch for: what the host supports, what's included, and whether the client can leave easily. Lumeen hosting works this way for sites built with HTML, Next.js, React, Vite or Astro, and exports from Lovable, Bolt and v0. It doesn't host WordPress or PHP sites, sites that need their own database or server, or online shops.

Account ownership and handover

Whatever setup you choose, three things should end up with the client: the domain, a way into the hosting, and the right to use and move the site's files. Settle each one at the start, while everyone is on good terms.

The domain

Register the domain in the client's name, with their details, even if you do the paperwork. For .au names this is more than good manners. auDA explains that a registrant holds a licence to use the name. Its licensing rules say a .com.au name must match the applicant's own business name, trade mark, or a service they provide, and the applicant warrants that their details are true and that they aren't acting as a proxy for someone else. A designer holding a client's .com.au in their own name sits awkwardly with both. Our guide on how to buy a .com.au domain name walks through it.

The hosting account

If the site lives in your account, plan how it will leave. Most platforms let you transfer a project. Vercel, for example, moves a project between teams with no downtime and carries over deployments, environment variables and domains. Integrations, logs and usage history don't come with it, and the receiving team needs a valid payment method first. Do a test transfer once, so you know how it behaves before a client asks.

The code and copyright

Under Australian copyright law, when a work is commissioned the copyright usually stays with the person who made it, and passes to the client only by agreement. Paying the invoice doesn't settle it by itself. Say in writing who owns the design and code, what happens to any reusable parts you bring from project to project, and when ownership passes (often on final payment).

A handover checklist

• Domain: registered to the client, renewal date noted, auto-renew on.
• DNS: the client can log in to wherever DNS is managed, and email records are documented so nobody breaks their inbox.
• Hosting: the client is an owner of the account, or there's a written plan for transferring it.
• Code: a repository the client can access, or an up-to-date zip of the site's files.
• Logins: stored in the client's password manager, not in your email.
• Third-party services: forms, analytics, booking tools and fonts listed, with who pays for each.

When you move an existing site between hosts, keep the old page addresses working with redirects. Our guide on migrating a website without losing SEO covers the steps.

The free-tier rules that catch designers out

Free plans from Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare and GitHub are excellent for learning and personal projects. Each has its own rules on commercial use and usage, and client work is where they bite. These are the terms at the time of writing (October 2026). Check the current pages before you rely on them.

Vercel Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use

Vercel's fair use guidelines say Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use, and all commercial use needs Pro or Enterprise. Its definition is broad. A deployment counts as commercial if anyone involved in making it gains financially, and the examples include receiving payment to create, update or host the site. In plain terms, if a client pays you to build it, it shouldn't sit on Hobby. Pro is listed at US$20 a month and includes US$20 of usage credit. Hobby accounts are held to their usage caps and can't buy more.

Netlify Free allows commercial use, with shared, hard-capped credits

Netlify's support forum has confirmed several times, most recently in 2025, that the free plan can be used for commercial projects. The catch is the credit system. The Free plan includes 300 credits a month with a hard limit. A production deploy uses 15 credits, each GB of bandwidth uses 20, and every 10,000 requests use 2. When the balance runs out, Netlify's docs say all web projects in the account are paused and visitors see a "Site not available" page.

Put ten client sites in one free account and they share those 300 credits. Ten production deploys alone use half of them. One busy month on one site can take all ten offline. Netlify's subscription agreement also says free projects run with no service level commitments and can be shut down without notice. Paid plans start at US$9 a month for Personal and US$20 a month for Pro, which includes unlimited members.

Cloudflare Pages Free has generous limits and strict account rules

Cloudflare's free plan is the most generous of the four for simple sites. Requests to static files are free and unlimited, and the free plan allows 500 builds a month and up to 100 projects per account. Server-side functions share a daily request quota with Workers, which resets at midnight UTC.

The limits that matter for designers are in the agreement. Cloudflare's self-serve terms say you may not sign up for its services on behalf of a third party, or sell access to them, without written permission. They also say you may not collect credit card details on a web property that uses its free services. That matters if a client wants to take payments on their site. The client opening their own Cloudflare account and adding you is the cleaner path.

GitHub Pages isn't meant for running a business

GitHub's docs say Pages isn't intended or allowed as free hosting to run an online business, an ecommerce site, or a site mainly aimed at commercial transactions. Sites are capped at 1 GB with a soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB a month. Use it for documentation or your own portfolio, and host client business sites elsewhere.

When a free plan is enough

A free plan can be the right answer when the client owns the account, the site is mostly static, traffic is modest, and the plan's terms allow commercial use. A local tradie's five-page site in the client's own Cloudflare or Netlify account often fits. Paying starts to make sense when you need a commercial licence (Vercel), a usage cap would take the site offline (Netlify), you need support with a response time, or nobody is watching backups, security and updates.

Who pays, and how hosting can earn you recurring revenue

Hosting is one of the few parts of a website that brings in money every month. There are three common ways designers handle the money, and they suit different businesses.

The client pays the host directly

Simplest for you. You don't chase invoices or wear the cost when a client pays late. You earn from the build and any separate maintenance work, and nothing from hosting itself.

You resell hosting with a margin

You pay the host and invoice the client a higher monthly fee, often bundled into a care plan with edits and updates. The margin is yours, and so are the risks, including unpaid invoices, support calls and any outage the client blames on you. Price it so the hours you spend on support are covered, not just the hosting bill.

Referral or commission from the host

The client pays the host, and the host pays you a share for bringing them in. Programs vary a lot, so compare how long the commission lasts as well as the rate. Kinsta's affiliate program, for example, pays a one-off bonus of US$50 to US$500 plus 10% of monthly fees, at the time of writing.

Small monthly amounts add up across a portfolio, and a referral model keeps the support load with the host. Whichever model you use, tell the client how you're paid. It's easier to recommend a host when the client knows about the commission upfront.

Maintenance, security, backups, liability and support hours

Clients rarely separate hosting from looking after the site. To them, the person who built it is the person who fixes it. Decide who handles each of these before launch, and write it down.

Edit requests

Small changes are the most common request and the easiest to under-price. Agree what counts as an edit (a price change, a new photo, a staff bio), how many are included each month, how they're requested, and the turnaround. Larger changes, like a new page or a booking system, get quoted separately. Our guide to website maintenance costs shows what this work usually costs.

Security and updates

Static and modern framework sites on platforms like Vercel, Netlify or Cloudflare have less to patch than a WordPress site with plugins. Someone still needs to update dependencies, renew any third-party keys, and watch for problems. If a site does get compromised, the client will call whoever looks after it. Our guide on what to do when a website is hacked covers the first steps.

Backups

The Australian Cyber Security Centre lists regular backups as a basic protection for every business. For a site deployed from a Git repository, the repository is the main backup of the code. Content kept elsewhere, such as form submissions, a content management system or uploaded files, needs its own backup. Agree who checks that backups run and who restores them.

Liability

Under the Australian Consumer Law, services you sell must be carried out with due care and skill, and businesses that buy services to help run their business have consumer rights too. A contract can set out what you're responsible for, but it can't sign away those guarantees. If you resell hosting, an outage can land on you even when the fault is upstream. Professional indemnity insurance and a clear scope both help.

Support hours

State when you're available and what counts as urgent. A site that's down on a Saturday is urgent. A typo can wait until Monday. If you can't offer after-hours cover, say so in writing, or choose a host that provides it.

What to put in the contract

A short, clear hosting and maintenance agreement prevents most disputes. If you use the same terms for every client, the ACCC notes that Australia's unfair contract terms laws protect small businesses with fewer than 100 employees or under $10 million in annual turnover, and since 9 November 2023 using unfair terms in those standard form contracts can attract penalties. Keep your terms balanced, and get legal advice on the final wording.

• Ownership: the client is the domain registrant and hosting account owner, or the contract says how and when accounts transfer to them.
• Intellectual property: who owns the design and code, when ownership passes, and any parts you keep the right to reuse.
• Hosting provider and plan: which platform, which plan, and confirmation that it allows commercial use.
• Fees and billing: who pays the host, what you charge, when, and what happens if a payment fails.
• Commissions: whether you earn a referral or commission from the host, stated plainly.
• Edits and changes: what's included each month, how requests are made, turnaround times, and how larger work is quoted.
• Security, updates and backups: who does each, how often, and who restores the site after a failure.
• Support hours: when you're available, what counts as urgent, and response times.
• Liability: what you're responsible for, what the host is responsible for, and a sensible limit that respects the consumer guarantees.
• Exit and handover: notice period, what you hand over (files, logins, transfer of accounts), how long it takes, and any fee for the work.

How to choose the right setup for each client

There's no single right answer for every client. A few questions narrow it down quickly.

• The client wants control: use their own account and add yourself. If they'd rather not manage anything, a managed host that bills them directly keeps you out of the middle.
• You want hosting as a business: reselling with a margin can work, as long as you price in the support. If you don't, a referral model gives you recurring income without the 9pm calls.
• Commercial use: rule out Vercel Hobby and GitHub Pages for paid client sites, and keep paying clients out of shared free accounts.
• The exit test: picture the day you stop working together. If that ends in a fight over logins, change the setup now.

For most freelancers and small agencies, the safest default is a setup where the client owns the domain and the hosting account, a written agreement covers edits and support, and you earn from the work you actually do. If the client would rather not deal with hosting at all, a managed host that bills them directly gives them one place to go while you stay in charge of the build. For sites built with AI tools, see built a website with AI, now what.

Key takeaways

1. (01)

   There are four common setups: the client's account, your account, reseller hosting, and a managed host that bills the client directly.

2. (02)

   The client should be the domain registrant and able to get into the hosting, with copyright and handover agreed in writing.

3. (03)

   Check commercial-use terms before launch: Vercel Hobby and GitHub Pages don't suit paid client sites, and Netlify's free credits are shared and hard-capped.

4. (04)

   Put ownership, fees, commissions, edits, backups, support hours, liability and exit steps in a short written agreement.

Frequently asked questions

More answers on price, hosting and timing in our FAQ.