I cannot tell you how many times I’ve run into the situation where a client has a website hosted on their last developer’s web server.  9 out of 10 times, there’s a disconnect in that relationship and the developer/designer has become hostile or non-responsive, and I have to pick up the pieces.

I’m not here to judge why that relationship went bad, I’m here to COMPLETELY JUDGE the hosting choices that freelance developers make.

Why, oh, why do designer/developers consider it a good business practice to host websites for their clients?  Do you think you are an ISP or Hosting provider like Media Temple or something?  Just think about the ramifications folks.  If the client decides to move on, then what?  Now you’ve got to deal with that morass of moving their site and email off your server?

Why, oh, why didn’t you just have the client host the site on their own hosting account that they own and manage?  Even if they can’t manage it, just set them up and put everything on their account on auto-renew.  Jeez folks, how hard can that be?

Also, you are not going to make a huge profit by hosting people.  The amount of energy you expend to manage a hosting account, will quickly eat up the meager profits you might get out of the deal.  If you are making a good amount of money, then you are simply overcharging the client and that makes you a bastard that takes advantage of the unwitting public in my opinion, not a good business person.

Blech, stop it folks, it’s just not worth it.