Clients who made their own website ..

DaveGears86

DaveGears86

Member
Hi all,

I have had clients contact me who have signed up to websites such as vistaprint/1and1 etc, registered their domain with them and made their own "wonderful website in 15 minutes" for the fee that they pay monthly to the company etc ..

Now, as I understand it - these accounts do not have FTP access (for obvious reasons) which means we as developers cannot deliver a website in our own way (dreamweaver/code etc)
(I'm persuming this is all correct, if I'm wrong then please enlighten me)

So, is it a lost cause when a client asks you to look at their website which has been domain registered and self-built (often poorly, hence why they seek a designer) with these companies that do not allow FTP access and real coding?

is there any way around it? (aside from the client transfering their domain to a hosting company of course)

I'm desperate to know what I/we can do in these situations!
thanks.
 
Katedesign said:
I have websites on 1and1 with FTP access...but never had an instant website to look after.
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Yeah, I forgot to differentiate about 1and1's real hosting and their "create your own Website" package, which is what I mean. (vistaprint do the same thing, which has no FTP access as far as I am aware)

It just seems such a pain that I have to turn people away who have taken the plunge to create their own and regretted it, and are stuck with the sitebuilder. (Again, I'm hoping I am wrong and there is a way for us to upload our work as you would on a regular web-hosting package).
 
Why turn them away? Just build them a fantastic new website on regular hosting and then get the domain transferred. If the customer owns the domain then they have every right to move it away I believe, unless VP/1&1 have some dastardly 'tie in'.

Great to hear you are finding customers like this. We have picked up a couple from yell.com and one from another site builder that I forget the name of now. It goes to show that bespoke is still king :icon_biggrin:
 
Corrosive said:
Why turn them away? Just build them a fantastic new website on regular hosting and then get the domain transferred. If the customer owns the domain then they have every right to move it away I believe, unless VP/1&1 have some dastardly 'tie in'.

Great to hear you are finding customers like this. We have picked up a couple from yell.com and one from another site builder that I forget the name of now. It goes to show that bespoke is still king :icon_biggrin:
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Thanks for the response,

I really want to do this for my clients ...But I lack the confidence of doing it because I'm unsure of the best way to handle it/order to do it because I haven't before, You say build them a website on reg hosting and THEN get the domain transferred (would this be the correct or only order to do it? - I'm inexperienced with transfering domains etc)

I would be happy to help clients transfer their domain to reg hosting (as most clients are unsure what this even means etc) ..But is it a pain? and do you know roughly how long the process takes to switch hosts?

Also, If I hosted my clients websites on my own personal package (I know reseller hosting is for this purpose) could I get in trouble for hosting my clients websites on my own personal package?

thank you. I really appreciate the help
 
DaveGears86 said:
I really want to do this for my clients ...But I lack the confidence of doing it because I'm unsure of the best way to handle it/order to do it because I haven't before, You say build them a website on reg hosting and THEN get the domain transferred (would this be the correct or only order to do it? - I'm inexperienced with transfering domains etc)
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You can build a website on your hosting (if allowed). Create a subdomain so you are building at yourdomain.co.uk/customerdomain.co.uk and then switch when you need to.

DaveGears86 said:
I would be happy to help clients transfer their domain to reg hosting (as most clients are unsure what this even means etc) ..But is it a pain? and do you know roughly how long the process takes to switch hosts?
Click to expand...

Should just be a process of registering the domain with your registrar and then asking 1&1/VP to change the IPS Tags. Process should take no more than 48 hours.

DaveGears86 said:
Also, If I hosted my clients websites on my own personal package (I know reseller hosting is for this purpose) could I get in trouble for hosting my clients websites on my own personal package?
Click to expand...

Ha, ha. No idea. Check your Ts & Cs.
 
DaveGears86 said:
Also, If I hosted my clients websites on my own personal package (I know reseller hosting is for this purpose) could I get in trouble for hosting my clients websites on my own personal package?
Click to expand...

Strange thing to ask - ultimately what matters to the client is having a high quality site that makes a difference to their business. If you are doing 'one off' web sites that clients update themselves then I'd be inclined to host the site so at last once a year you get something and eventually if you have enough clients then the hosting adds up to something. You need good hosting though as it could come back to bite you.
 
A fair amount of people start off with reseller packages, I don't see any harm in it at all, I do it. I only have 1 client who needs resources available at all times so I put them on their own VPS, time for me to upgrade the hosting package soon as more clients come in though.

Just balance it and dont do what I did and got too much hosting and then couldn't afford it because it didn't pay for itself.

I generally build a client site in a staging area, then migrate it over to it's own vhost.

Hope this helps you out a little.
 
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