hosting for laravel freelancer

@mezie

Actually, It is up to you, whether you want to buy domain for you client or not. Mostly clients don't know about how to buy a domain or space on internet to put there site on. You can give them choice, if they host themselves, you will charge less, if buy domain for them, you can charge more.

Secondly, any hosting company that give better customer support will be the best choice. You are not limited to select any specific hosting company.

Thirdly, The amount of money you are going charge also depend or the project you take. As recommendation, If you don't know how much time the project will take to build, take money hourly. I mean if more time, take more money, if less time less money. If you know how much time the project will take, charge fixed. I mostly take database projects up then 300$

@hero21 thanks for your response. I asked about which hosting because I do about Laravel not playing well with shared hosting.

Hi @mezie

I always use Digital Ocean with my Laravel projects, it can be a bit of a steep learning curve if you're just starting out with server setups but Ive found some pretty decent setup guides here (not suer how much experience you have)

http://davidmyers.name/post/laravel-on-digital-ocean

Regarding charging, once you've got your head round setting up the servers and can do it relatively easily, its an easy way to charge an extra half day for server setup, maintenance should be pretty negligible thereafter.

Hi @mezie,

Your question is generic to any freelancer.

1. Should I be responsible for my clients hosting or I should let them handle that themselves.

Well this will depend on what they want and their level of expertise. The real question you are asking are:

• do I want to be responsible ever for this and add this to the scope of services?
• do I have the knowledge to do so and is this what I want to do?
• what is my "disaster recovery plan"?
• Can I find a partner for this?

2. If I will be responsible for hosting, what hosting do you recommend.

Well I would go for big companies offering either dedicated servers or cloud services. Amazon has a lot to offer.

3. Like how much should I charge a client (what and what should be considered to come about this charge).

It is up to the market price (very vague answer for a very vague question). I would consider how much time you will spend monthly to maintain the solution based on your price card. Then you add a markup on the solution from the provider. Frankly I prefer to be transparent with the client and charge only a fee for the added services. I can go with any solution then and advice the client accordingly. You always want to know who is responsible for what and get paid fairly for the level of responsibility.

Having your own servers or managing them for your clients require time and knowledge. Are you ready to do it?

Hope this help.

Best

Laravel is playing good with any serious hosting companies. By experience, no issues even on windows hosting based services (I used hostforlife.eu or ovh.com). I personally prefer dedicated servers and Amazon containers but thats another story.

@mdecooman thanks for your response, definitely don't want to manage servers for clients because of the extra time and knowledge.

@mezie there is lot of configuration to be done when you deploy in shared hosting ..i would suggest to avoid shared hosting to the max .. you can try aws .. and google cloud services and regarding hosting .. its better to do it yourself than giving it to the client ...include the charges for hosting as a whole package ..and if time and knowledge matters .. you can exclude the hosting completey..

As a freelancer starting out you'll be doing more updating and adding features at first generally because the "php guy is busy and can't get to it by the timeframe". Just FYI.

When I do take care of hosting you need to add in support as was mentioned I think. Support includes time and costs. I use forge and envoyer along with primarily digital ocean. So a $10 box I might charge $20 month. This up charge pays for the other services and time. Now when hosting gets more complicated meaning file hosting on aws and vertical scaling etc, I direct the client to preferred vendors and have them give me access. Otherwise billing etc gets complicated and tends to be a general pain otherwise more so with support requests for more or less resources and dynamic billing issues. Also cancelling. My site I have a client area for these things like invoices and management/support requests.

Always, as Tayler had the experience, keep daily backups off your primary provider. Weekly I download the latest backups locally.

I always provide the hosting, and whenever possible the domain name. In fact, I generally refuse to work with someone else's hosting, and if I had to, I would charge MORE for it, not less. Time is money, and being able to work against a known server saves me time. It also avoids the hassles of having to gather credentials from the client and be responsible for them.

If you are unfamiliar with running a server, Forge can take away some of the hassle, so consider using that. I've been working with web servers for well over a decade so it's easy enough for me to do myself, but Forge just flat out saves me time, so I use that. For hosting, I normally use Digital Ocean, but I'll shop around for each project and pick the one that fits. I will typically quote a flat "hosting and maintenance" fee charged monthly or yearly, which will cover domain registration, SSL, hosting fees, security updates on the server, and security + minor updates to the website itself. The amount I charge depends on the scope of the project.

@i960 valid point, but what do you do if the client request access? Just wondering as I refuse personally but your situation might be different?

@jekinney I would refuse. The server itself is not their concern, and they are hiring me to take away that burden. It's no different than if they had signed up for a traditional shared hosting provider. You aren't going to get any kind of access to the server itself with shared hosting either, at least in most cases. Also, I'm picky about the clients and projects I take. I want people who have an idea and want me to implement that idea, and don't really care about the details of how it's done. I interview my clients first, and if I get the impression that they are going to micromanage the project or try to get involved in the nuts and bolts of the project, then I simply walk away. I think it's very important to have the right kind of relationship with your clients, and some relationships just do not work.

@i960 got yeah, thanks for the answer.

@i960 I used to work on B-52's, I believe in working with people and bending over backwards to help people, I do not like your arrogant attitude. Currently I maintain a site for a small non-profit, and I'm not just going to walk away.
It's people that has the bend over backwards attitude that made this country a free country.

@jlrdw Wow, you took what I said WAY wrong. I don't have an arrogant attitude. When I said walk away, I mean not take on projects that aren't a right fit. I want to give my clients the best value for their money, and sometimes I'm not the right person to do the project, or sometimes they do not have realistic expectations. I did not say walk away in the middle of a project, that is ridiculous and I would never do that. I do bend over backwards for my clients. Often times that means doing extra work without charging for it or working during my free time because they have an urgent need. But there are some clients who want to micromanage and expect tons of work for pennies, and I just don't have time to deal with that. The customer is not always right and there is nothing wrong with choosing not to take on a project for whatever reason. It's business, not charity. It needs to be equitable for both parties involved.

@i960 understood then. Just a thought on this, remember everyone is different. Like the non profit I mentioned. Money is tight there (very tight). They had a static site only and wanted to show the animals in a database format with tables like some other Humane Societies. They already used godaddy, so I stuck with godaddy for the php mysql part. I have had no problems with the site on godaddy. That doesn't mean I'd always use godaddy. Remember, do a little for client a, he or she may know a future client b that could be a big job.

I totally get it that if you do a favor for one client, it may result in a bigger payday with another client. I've been down that road before. I should have mentioned that I have a full time job already where I have complete control over my environment. Any client work I take on is side work, so I'm able to be a bit more picky. I wouldn't turn down that godaddy job you did if I was freelancing full time and needed work. But I would offer to move them over to better hosting for free.