Should I host client websites

Lee:
Welcome to this bonus episode of the Trailblazer FM podcast, where we ask the important question: should I be hosting sites for my clients or should we be handing it off to them?

Lee:
To help us unpick this question, we have our wonderful sponsor of the Agency Transformation Live event, 20i, so massive thank you to them for, A, sponsoring the event to help make it happen, and B, for helping us answer this question.

Lee:
There are two things I would love you to do in this episode. Number one: stay tuned for near the end where Austin Drops a feature he should have mentioned pretty early on, because it’s pretty incredible. And then the second thing is to check out our event over on agencytransformation.live. If you are in the UK and you can make it, it’s only a few weeks away. It would be amazing to see you there. Okay, on with the show.

Lee:
Welcome to Trailblazer FM. This is your handsome host, Mr. Lee Matthew Jackson, and today we’ve flown in the one and only Austin from 20i. How are you today, mate?

Austin:
Hi, Lee. I’m great. Yeah, really good to be on the show, and look forward to getting into some WordPress stuff.

Lee:
Yes, mate. Well I’m glad you said that because we have a whole slew of WordPress agencies listening in, and we love building sites for clients. But one of the biggest, I don’t know, bugbears I think I certainly have had over the years is actually hosting websites for clients. And the big question: should we host it for them or should we say, “Here you are, here’s your site and here’s a host. Good luck”? So it is wonderful to have you on. We’ve got a whole load of questions to throw at you, so I hope you are prepared.

Lee:
But before we do that, mate, could we just get a little bit of a 60-second intro into the world of Austin. Who’s Austin, what makes him tick, what’s your favourite colour, and maybe something that people don’t know about you, mate?

Austin:
Of course. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m currently the development manager at 20i. I’ve been doing this for about six months. Prior to that, I was the customer services manager at 20i. What that did was gave me a really good understanding of what customers actually want from the platform and what we should be really trying to develop understanding what customers need, what they want, and yet, gives me a really good stepping-stone to move into the world of development and achieve those things. And my favourite colour is the 20i orange, and I can’t remember the hex number for it, and our designer will kill me for that.

Lee:
Well, let’s dive straight in, mate, and like I said, the big question right now on everybody’s lips is: should I be offering hosting to my clients, i.e., should I be managing the hosting? So big question, why should I offer hosting to my clients?

Austin:
From the outset, it really depends on you as the individual or the agency, whether you want to offer that. The key monetary motivation is of course the recurring revenue that you get from hosting clients, and that’s almost the obvious one. But for a lot of agencies, one of the key reasons to host a client’s website is that you get their repeat business later on down the line. You don’t lose that relationship over time. Whereas if you do a project for a client and hand that off to them, they can obviously choose any other agency they like. Whereas if you host it, you keep that relationship open and close, and that’s a big win down the line. And of course, acquiring new customers, as you’ll probably know, is costly in terms of marketing. Pay-per-click is not cheap, depending on what you’re doing. So customer acquisition costs really means keeping that close relationship with clients longer-term.

Lee:
Very often people will say to you, “Well, I need to generate leads right now,” and the advice so often is to actually look at your existing client base, isn’t it? So if you’ve not held on to that relationship, you’ve essentially handed everything off to the client and you don’t speak to them. It’s a lot harder to upsell them on something in the future than it would be if you have some sort of ongoing relationship with them, like you say.

Austin:
Absolutely. Yeah and I guess one of the things I’d say, that it’s obviously not mandatory to host client websites. And just to plug a cool 20i tool, we have this tool called the inter-customer transfer tool. So if you’ve done a project for a customer and you’re not wanting to host them, you can hand them off to their own hosting package, either with 20i or with another agency if that’s preferable. But often it’s to their own hosting. And it’s a seamless transfer, it’s a one-click handoff and yet it means that you’re not responsible for the support or the hosting, as an option if you don’t want to do the hosting. But like I said, there’s some key benefits to doing the hosting and managing the customer long-term.

Lee:
Absolutely. We’ve actually used that feature quite recently. So one of my clients, their previous developer was using 20i. Their developer was closing down cause they wanted to move on from the industry, and they just did that exact transfer process. So it was super easy.

Lee:
Okay, so we’ve established that offering some form of hosting is great to help us develop ongoing relationships, although we could be offering, say, an update service and allowing the client to manage their own hosting. So there are two different ways there that we can look at developing ongoing relationships with them.

Lee:
Should we choose hosting, what do you think’s the best package to purchase? Because if I look at, say, 20i or one of your competitors, I can see there’s resellers, there’s VPS, there’s a self-managed cloud, there’s AWS, there’s all sorts of different options. So as an agency, what do you think would be either the best package to select, or how would we go about choosing?

Austin:
There isn’t a single right answer, and obviously, it really depends on what the agency is trying to portray, and also the customer. One of the things that we try and do at 20i is make that choice flexible. Our central product is the reseller hosting, and that’s what all agencies choose who host with us. And that lets you host a blend of different types of customers on different platforms.

Austin:
So one of the key platforms that you get with the reseller hosting is the auto-scaling shared platform, which is the bulk of the hosting that we do. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t host client websites on a managed server or an unmanaged server. All of those are part and parcel of the reseller hosting, which is our core product for agencies.

Austin:
So yeah, it certainly depends, and it depends on the client. Managed servers are a great thing, really, for those customers who are hosting eCommerce websites or that have a bit more traffic. Managed servers are really the way forward. But on the same note, for agencies who have a lot of websites, you might have customers that just don’t need that. So hosting them on an auto-scaling shared platform is also a big win, and 20i lets you do all of them. So it’s a good package for an agency that’s hosting all-round customer sites.

Lee:
I must admit, that’s one of the benefits I enjoyed. So with our reseller account, we’ve got a few website; however, we do have some clients coming in who will be having some digital venues, so we can plug in AVPS which is amazing, all within the same account. So I was pretty impressed by that: the flexibility, which is pretty damn cool. Now here’s another question, and I know you know are a little bit biassed because we’re asking the guy from 20i here, but not all hosts are created equal. What should we look for in a host, as an agency, when choosing who to go with?

Austin:
In the industry, there’s a lot of hosts, and a lot of the products can appear on the surface the same, and it’s really difficult to distinguish between different companies and what are the key differences. One of the things that I’d say from the outset is that looking at customer reviews is a great way to start your search. It’s important to remember that reviews and review sites have an imperfect way of actually capturing the overall customer experience. So they’re not the perfect way of determining what host to go for, but it’s a good starting point.

Austin:
You can obviously also look at awards that hosts have won, and you also have to be very careful there, because the award has to be a reputable organisation. I will plug here that 20i won the top tier status in the Independent Review Signal Award two years in a row. Blushing a little bit. But yeah, that was a good achievement, and we’ve done well to win that two years in a row with the top tier status.

Austin:
But also, actually speak to the company. Contact sales. One of the things that we’ve really introduced at 20i in the past few months is doing personalised demos for prospective customers, and it really gives them an in-depth view of 20i, what we do. The person doing the demo can answer questions, and it’s a great way to find out really what’s at the heart of a company that you’re looking to choose.

Lee:
Things we’d look for as well is how easy is it to use specifically. So is the 20i control panel easy to use and understand? In our experience, yes. Do we feel like we’re getting good value for money? Again, in our experience, yes. You mentioned reputation. One of the conversions for us, as it were, was actually looking at your Trustpilot review, which is pretty impressive. 4.9, in the world of hosting, is a tough one to get, because those web designers, those web developers and those agencies, we’re pretty damn fussy. And if we are upset with a host, we are going to go Trustpilot, mate, and we’re going to tell people.

Austin:
Oh, yeah.

Lee:
So we’re talking about hosting of a website, but I know and you know that services such as 20i offer so much more. What services that would complement our general day-to-day hosting could we be offering through a platform such as 20i to our clients?

Austin:
In terms of add-ons and upgrades, one of the things that we’re very conscious of at 20i is that those sorts of services should really add value. They shouldn’t be too financially driven. Domain names; that’s a key upselling industry. We also offer a 20i email and SSL. One of the key selling points in terms of email is that 20i, it’s unlimited and it’s totally free. So we don’t think it’s one of those things that you should charge for, but you’re open to doing so if you wish. We also offer free unlimited SSLs, and again, there are paid-for upgrade SSL. So we offer what we call the simple SSL. It’s actually the same level of encryption as the free, let’s say, encrypt SSL. But for business websites and eCommerce stores, you get a $10,000 warranty. They’re always worth thinking about if you are doing sales through your website.

Lee:
For us as an agency, one of our fears when we look at offering hosting through any provider is that level of support that we would expect. And I’ve many a horror story of being called on Christmas Day because a website’s down, or being called at a weekend, or having a holiday and having it interrupted because there are problems. How does 20i manage reseller support? As the agency, are we responsible for connecting directly with you, or can our customers deal with you, as it were, in some form of white-label format?

Austin:
Managing support for customers is often a daunting task and the 20i, support team is really there to take the grunt work out of that task. So we’re available 24/7, 365 days a year, day and night, any time. And the way that we do support is that if you have any question from any of your clients, you can really just send that to us through a ticket system which we use.

Austin:
And the reason that we do use a ticket system is because often the types of questions that we get are more complicated. If they’re related to a client’s website, then if we can get all the information through a ticket, it’s very easy for us to have a quick turnaround on that and get it to the department if it needs escalation. But for the vast majority of tickets that we get, the agent who first picks that ticket up can get straight back to it.

Austin:
And it’s one of the things that drives reviews, having great support. So you can’t hide if you don’t have good support. It’s really critical in the hosting industry, and for agencies, they just rely on it, and it’s something that 20i would do really, really well.

Lee:
But from what I understand, I would still be, as the agency owner, the person who submits the ticket on behalf of the client as opposed to clients coming to you direct if I was reselling the hosting?

Austin:
That’s correct, yeah. So a client has a problem with their website; they’ll contact you as the agency. If you’re not sure you get in touch with the 20i support team. They’ll do their best to fix it.

Lee:
No worries. So for anyone who gets filled with dread at that, and I know that’s certainly me sometimes, the idea of clients chasing you down 24/7, clearly we as an agency wouldn’t have the resources to pass that on. In certain cases, where a client wants that level of support, that is where we would be using that handoff process, where we would actually build everything and then hand off the website, the 20i package, as it were, to the client using that service we mentioned right at the very beginning of this episode.

Lee:
However, we would then still offer something like monthly updates and maintenance. So they would provide us access. We’d do the monthly updates and maintenance. We can submit tickets on behalf of our client, therefore, in work time. But if there is a problem out of work time, the client has that level of control to be able to contact you guys direct, because they’re already the main billing person.

Lee:
So if offering 24/7 support as an agency scares you, that’s still an option to retain a relationship and still use a service such as 20i, or if you’re going to bring everything in-house, then brilliant, you’ve got a great team in 20i who’ve got your back.

Lee:
So I guess we should ask you a final question, then, before we bid you adieu, mate. It’s a simple question. We said this earlier: there are many hosts out there. Why choose 20i?

Austin:
Yeah. As we’re really focused on WordPress on this show and the upcoming event is all about WordPress, 20i does WordPress incredibly well. I would say personally, and again, I’m biassed, 20i does WordPress better than any other host in the market, and I’ll tell you why.

Austin:
We have a specific platform that was built only a few years ago just for WordPress, and it’s remarkably fast, and part of that is our in-house caching system. Some of the listers may be familiar with Stat Cache, which is a renowned caching plugin. But also, one of the key things about 20i as a whole is that we’re never standing still in terms of development, and as everyone who knows WordPress, it’s not standing still. There’s constant innovation in the industry. We keep up with that.

Austin:
Just recently, we released a new tool called WordPress Manager, which lets agencies manage all their WordPress sites from one to a thousand in bulk easily. You can update plugins, themes, updates, everything, from a single dashboard. That’s the type of development that we do for agency owners, and it’s something we’re really focused on, and yeah, we’re not slowing down.

Lee:
Mate, that feature feels like something we should have mentioned right at the very beginning. I wasn’t even aware of that, and I have a reseller account, so I’m going to have to go and look at that. Is there a link we can find for that so we can give people more information on that centralised management?

Austin:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It’s right in the control panel, but I’ll send you a link.

Lee:
Awesome. Folks, we will make sure that that link is in the show notes for you to check out. Well, folks, this has been an absolutely fascinating insight into the world of a host, really hearing from somebody who’s worked there for many years what goes on behind the scenes and the sort of services they provide. I’m really grateful as well that you’ve shared your own thoughts and opinions on what people should do with regards to getting hosting set up, either handing that off to their client or keeping it in-house and those developments of long-term relationships.

Lee:
I’m also really appreciative that 20i are sponsoring Agency Transformation Live 2022 this year. So, folks, head on over to agencytransformation.live and check out 20i’s Profile. There is some great information in there to help you get started with your own reseller package. And can I encourage you to come to the event? There are going to be several team members from 20i coming down all the way from Nottingham and joining us in Kettering for the day.

Lee:
I have no idea what you’re bringing. I guess you might bring a bit of swag. I don’t know. But it would be great to meet you guys. They’ve got their own table with us at the event and I assume they’re going to be hanging around for the cash bar later on as well in the evening. So it’ll be a great opportunity to physically meet some of the team from 20i and ask all the questions that you might have about hosting your own website, or especially about that centralised control panel that we mentioned right at the very end of the episode, because that sounds freaking awesome.

Austin:
Absolutely.

Lee:
So, folks, what are your opinions? Please let us know. Head on down to the show notes, and there will be a link for you to get involved in the conversation. We want to know from you: who would you choose for your hosting? Don’t worry, they’re not going to get upset if you don’t say 20i. Secondly, do you offer hosting to your clients? If so, why is it beneficial? How are you coping with it? Do you hate it? Do you love it? And if you don’t, why don’t you let us know in the comments? It’ll be great to have a conversation. And don’t forget, we can have that conversation in real life, either with me or with 20i, at Agency Transformation Live. Check that out over on agencytransformation.live. Austin, mate, thank you so much for your time. You’re a legend, and we look forward to having you back on the show another time.

Austin:
My pleasure, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee:
Take care. Cheerio.