If your agency offers WordPress design and development services, you’ll inevitably encounter the hosting dilemma. Once you’ve launched a client’s new WordPress site, should you hand over complete control to the client? Or is it better to offer managed WordPress hosting and ongoing support services, building a longer-term — and potentially lucrative — relationship?;
There are pros and cons to both approaches. In this article, we’ll explore the advantages and the potential drawbacks of partnering with a hosting provider to offer WordPress hosting and support. And we’ll highlight best practices that reduce the workload for your teams and increase the likelihood of happy, long-term engagements.
WordPress hosting may not be your agency’s core competence. A team of developers, designers, and marketers may feel like hosting is a distraction from what they do best. It calls for a completely different skillset. However, many agencies offering WordPress-based services choose to provide ongoing hosting and maintenance contracts. Here’s why.
Hosting creates stable, predictable income that supports your agency’s growth. Instead of a stream of one-off projects, repeating service fees smooth out the revenue fluctuations all creative agencies experience. A competitive monthly rate per site quickly turns into a meaningful, dependable revenue stream.
An ongoing service contract extends your agency’s relationships with clients beyond the initial website launch. When you host and support your clients’ sites, you maintain regular communication and remain actively engaged with their business needs.
They appreciate having a trusted resource to handle technical challenges, site maintenance, and security issues. You cultivate happy, loyal clients who are more likely to return for future projects and refer your agency to other businesses.
Client hosting gives your agency greater control over site performance, reliability, and security. Instead of dealing with inconsistent client-chosen hosting providers — and all the performance problems and support headaches that entails — you can select managed WordPress hosting solutions optimized for speed, stability, and security.
Agency hosting services can be a great move for your business, but there are potential challenges and drawbacks you’ll need to be aware of.
When your agency takes on hosting services, clients expect you — not the hosting company — to provide consistent uptime, fast page loads, and reliable security. The increased responsibility puts your team under pressure to proactively manage and maintain client websites. Your team must have the bandwidth, expertise, and processes in place to troubleshoot problems and meet client expectations.
If your agency has historically allowed clients to choose their own hosting providers, offering your own WordPress hosting can lead to operational complexity. Managing multiple hosting accounts or providers with different billing cycles, control panels, and support processes is cumbersome and inefficient.
You may find that, instead of providing a useful revenue stream, hosting drains agency resources and distracts your team from core creative or strategic projects.
Hosting services tie your agency’s reputation to your clients’ hosting experiences. If your provider goes down or gets hacked, clients won’t blame the hosting company — they’ll blame you.
Poor hosting experiences erode trust, prompting negative reviews and lost referrals. In extreme cases, hosting problems can undermine the relationships you hoped to strengthen and cost you clients.
If you found the list of potential problems disheartening, you’re not alone. It’s why some agencies forgo hosting and WordPress services revenue. They prefer a simple operational model that focuses on their core offering.
However, partnering with the right managed WordPress hosting provider will help you to overcome these challenges.
You will encounter many WordPress hosting providers that operate with models better suited to small business clients or large enterprises with in-house expertise — agencies fall between the cracks. Choosing a managed WordPress hosting provider like Pressable that understands the challenges agencies face can make all the difference.
When you embark on the vendor selection process, look for a platform built for WordPress agency hosting.
Important features to consider include:
In a nutshell, agencies should choose a hosting partner that can lighten the management workload while providing the uptime and reliability clients expect.
Even with an exceptional hosting provider, it’s important to set clear expectations with your clients. A simple, well-structured contract or Service-Level Agreement (SLA) should outline exactly what your agency is responsible for and what you’re not.
Specify details such as what types of support are included, expected response times, and site customization. Be transparent about where your services end. For example, whether you handle issues caused by the client’s custom code or third-party integrations.
Clarity around service scope prevents misunderstandings, limits scope creep, and protects your team and your client relationships from avoidable friction.
Simplifying your hosting operations ensures you reap the benefits without overburdening your team. Wherever possible, automate WordPress tasks like core and plugin updates, backups, malware scans, and security patches. Automation frees your team from mundane, repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-value activities.
Consider consolidating hosting services with one reliable managed WordPress hosting provider to reduce operational complexity. Dealing with multiple providers adds needless confusion and increases overhead.
Finally, choose a hosting solution that easily scales as client sites and your agency grow. Most hosting platforms require disruptive and time-consuming migrations to add significant resources to a hosting plan. The best managed WordPress hosting providers support seamless autoscaling that lets you grow organically.
Offering WordPress hosting isn’t the right move for every agency, but for many, it’s a powerful way to generate recurring revenue, strengthen client relationships, and deliver a higher-quality service. Instead of handing off hosting to clients or juggling multiple providers, reevaluate whether your current setup truly supports your agency’s long-term goals.
If you’re exploring managed WordPress hosting solutions tailored specifically to agencies, take a look at our WordPress hosting platform and Automattic for Agencies, a partner program built for agencies like yours.
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