How to Use iThemes Hosting as a Freelance WordPress Developer

Website hosting is a foundational need for any freelance WordPress developer building websites for clients. Your clients don’t know the first thing about hosting, but they still need it. It’s up to you to set them up right. But if you’re still establishing yourself as a freelance developer, you may not be ready to have your own VPS or dedicated server.

Kevin D. Hendricks
Website hosting is a foundational need for any freelance WordPress developer building websites for clients. Your clients don’t know the first thing about hosting, but they still need it. It’s up to you to set them up right. But if you’re still establishing yourself as a freelance developer, you may not be ready to have your own VPS or dedicated server. Which is why we’ve rolled out iThemes Hosting for freelance developers.   iThemes Hosting is simple yet smarter WordPress hosting. We combined an incredibly solid platform from Liquid Web with iThemes Sync’s easy-to-use interface. iThemes Hosting is powered by iThemes Sync, the service you know and love to manage multiple WordPress sites to sell WordPress maintenance. [pullquote]We think iThemes Hosting is ideal for the freelance WordPress developer who is still getting established.[/pullquote] You need a hosting solution to offer your clients, but you’re not ready for a full-blown VPS or dedicated server. Let’s explore iThemes Hosting for the freelance developer and see how it can benefit you, how to know if it’s for you specifically, and how you turn it into a source of income.

Pros of iThemes Hosting for Freelance Developers

When it comes to choosing hosting for your clients, you have a lot of options. Let’s look at what iThemes Hosting can offer:
  • Quick installation: iThemes Hosting will set up a new installation of WordPress for you—and it takes about two minutes. That includes installing and setting up Sync. Shaving minutes off your process lets you get more done.
  • Easy migration: If your client has an existing site you need to transfer, we can do an easy migration.
  • Simple, smart control panel: We use Sync Pro to offer an easy but powerful control panel. This means you can manage all your client sites, do all your maintenance, and get all your info in one spot. No more logging in and out of multiple client dashboards.
  • Create website reports: Offer your clients a regular report on all those important details about their site in one place: traffic, SEO, security, backups, updates, comments, and more.
  • Customize the WordPress dashboard: Clients don’t need access to everything in WordPress, so minimize confusion or damage they can cause by hiding WordPress menu items.
  • Uptime monitoring: Get peace of mind knowing your client sites are being monitored.
  • Certified secure with free SSL certificates: Browsers are highlighting “not secure” sites and Google is adding it to their search rank formula, so clients see the impact of security more than ever before. We’ve got those concerns covered with automatic and free SSL certificates.
  • Backup Buddy (w/ any two-site plan): Give your clients the assurance that their site is backed up in case of trouble.
  • iThemes Security Pro (w/ business plan): With hackers in the headlines, clients will come to you with questions. You can put them at ease knowing you have security in place.
That’s a quick overview of what iThemes Hosting has to offer.

Is iThemes Hosting for Me?

We designed iThemes Hosting to serve a specific audience—so it’s not for everyone. But we think it can really help a specific crowd that’s been part of our core business since the start—freelance developers.

Designed for WordPress Websites

First of all, iThemes Hosting is self-installed WordPress hosting.
  • It’s not managed WordPress hosting. If you or your clients want WordPress completely managed by someone else, that’s not this.
  • It’s not wide-open HTML hosting. It’s for WordPress sites. If you want full access to build and host HTML sites, that’s not this.
(Liquid Web can help if you’re looking for other solutions.)

Basic Freelancers

Secondly, iThemes Hosting is geared for freelance developers who are still getting established. Maybe you’re new to the game or maybe you focus on offering basic sites.
  • Fewer clients: Either you’re just starting out or you have a smaller client base. You’re not managing hundreds of sites (maybe someday, but not yet).
  • More saving, less risk: You want to save time and give clients a great solution, but you’re not ready for the risk and expense of getting your own server and reselling hosting.
  • The sweet spot: There’s a range between regular shared hosting and your own dedicated server. We think iThemes Hosting can be that sweet spot in between that makes it easier to manage your client sites but isn’t a deep dive into server management. (That can be a great solution for experienced freelance developers, but few start there.)
  • Basic, workhorse solution: With all the extra services, iThemes Hosting is a step up from shared hosting. It’s an everyday solution for common websites. If you’re building complex custom sites, massive e-commerce sites, or dealing with huge traffic, you probably want a more robust hosting solution with custom options (Liquid Web can help).
You want to give your clients something better than bargain basement shared hosting, while also making the management process easier for yourself. But you’re also not ready for a full VPS or dedicated hosting. If that sounds like you, check out iThemes Hosting. If that sort of sounds like you, but you’re not sure, share your hosting feedback. We want to help you serve your clients better, so ask those questions or tell us how we can make iThemes Hosting better. If that doesn’t sound like you, and you need a more advanced hosting solution to serve your clients, we’d love to pass you along to Liquid Web.

How Can I Make Money with iThemes Hosting?

There are two ways iThemes Hosting can be a moneymaker for freelance developers:

1. Sell WordPress Maintenance

The iThemes Hosting dashboard, with all the reports, monitoring, and easy updates through Sync, makes it very easy to offer WordPress maintenance services to your clients. Once your clients are set up on iThemes Hosting, they can add you as a user to manage their account. Now you can do their WordPress updates, moderate comments, generate reports, handle backups, manage security, monitor for uptime, and more—all in one place. WordPress maintenance is a huge service for your clients, and you should definitely be charging for it. That’s a major chunk of recurring revenue that can build a foundation for your business.

2. Affiliate Income

Most of your clients probably don’t even understand web hosting. They just want a website. They likely don’t know the difference between a domain, a host, and the actual website. They’re probably looking to you for all of these services, whether you provide them or not. So it’s an opportunity to offer them a service, whether you’re reselling hosting or just making a recommendation. We hope you’ll recommend iThemes Hosting, and we’re happy to reward you for doing so. We’re re-launching the iThemes affiliate program, which means you can make some cash just for recommending iThemes hosting. We’re offering a 25% affiliate reward for any sales you refer. If you’re not ready to be a hosting reseller, an affiliate reward is a good way to make sure your clients are on a good host you want to work with and make some money too.

Watch the Webinar: See iThemes Hosting in Action

When you’re building websites for clients, you want to minimize the variables. Hosting can be one of those variables. You need to find a host that works well for you and makes it easy to offer these services to your clients. We think iThemes Hosting for the freelance developer can be that option. To learn more about the launch of iThemes Hosting, check out our Growing Your Business with iThemes Hosting webinar with iThemes founder Cory Miller. He talks more about what defines iThemes Hosting and why it’s unique. Then consider using iThemes Hosting for your WordPress project.
Save 50% off* all iThemes Hosting plans with coupon code HOSTWP50 through Sept. 30, 2018 @ 11:59 p.m. (CT).

Get iThemes Hosting today

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