In most cases, we expect that technology is going to have a few little hiccups along the way, and it’s part of our job and we know how to handle most issues that come along. When a client comes to us and has never had a website before, we are starting from scratch, and can set up their domains, email, hosting, SSL certificate, etc. all at one company to make life easier for all of us.
Some web design studios require that their clients all have their sites on a server maintained by them. However, we don’t require that and many times clients come to us after having domain names, email, and hosting already set up at other companies. We don’t always migrate domains or set up hosting elsewhere if the client seems content where they are and if the company has decent customer service and modern server space. However, if they are on an old server that’s slow, has security flaws, or bad customer service, we’ll almost always suggest getting a Managed WordPress hosting plan elsewhere.
When we create an estimate for a project, we price the project for the normal amount of tech work, but sometimes after we move onto development of the website, we learn the that clients at times do come to us with multiple domain names spread out at different companies, or hosting with one company and email with another, or sometimes a client really doesn’t even know what products that they have or where. This is the sort of thing that we don’t anticipate and is often a tangled mess to sort out that’s beyond what’s normally expected. After we receive usernames and passwords for client’s accounts, if we notice that it’s a much more complicated situation than we planned on, we will contact the client about any extra costs that may be involved to straighten things out, or to move. We generally never charge a client for technical problems that were beyond their control.
