Turn Your Agency’s Hosting Costs Into a Source of Revenue

Running an agency? There are more ways to make money than just delivering top-quality projects.

Many agencies are so focused on client-side tasks that they overlook other opportunities to offset costs and generate more income.

And those ways are passive – you’ll basically make money without active involvement.

One such opportunity is to take a closer look at your hosting solutions. Every agency hosting costs incurs one way or another, whether it’s hosting their site or their clients’ websites.

Rather than just paying for hosting, both for yourself and the clients, you can monetize it and turn your agency hosting costs into a new revenue stream.

So why not use this opportunity to turn your hosting expenses into profits? Let’s explore the possibilities of cloud hosting for your agency in this blog.

Why Should Agencies Opt for Managed Cloud Hosting?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, agencies must stay ahead of the curve to ensure optimal performance, streamlined workflow, and increased profitability. Choosing the right hosting solution plays a crucial role in achieving these goals.

While various hosting solutions are available, most fall short compared to managed cloud hosting.

Shared hosting is not always the best option for businesses that require high-performing websites. Here are some common problems with shared hosting:

• Limited in Resources. Scalability can be a major issue with shared hosting. You cannot easily increase or decrease server resources on the go.
• Compromised Security. Hosting your websites on shared hosting means you are more exposed to malicious online activities. Even a virus on some other website on shared hosting can crash your website.
• Exessive Management. You’ll need experts to manage the server-side issues for you.

While VPS and dedicated hosting can offer more resources and control, they have their own drawbacks, such as server management issues and limited scalability.

Managed cloud hosting, on the other hand, is a different ball game altogether. And here are some reasons why agencies should stick to managed cloud hosting

Shared Vs Dedicated Vs Cloud Hosting – Know The Difference

Reliable

Managed cloud hosting provides reliable website hosting on multiple server sites and data centers. This ensures that even if a data center is affected, your website will be operational from another center, thus minimizing downtime.

Cloudways, for instance, offers 99% uptime, and most cloud hosting sites haven’t experienced any server-side issues leading to website crashes in years.

It is essential to note that website crashes can result in a loss of business for your agency, and addressing your client’s website downtime can also be a hassle.

Scalable

Managed cloud hosting solutions offer unmatched scalability, allowing you to scale up or down depending on your site’s usage and the number of visitors.

The best part, you’ll only have to pay for the resources you use.

Reduced Management Resources

Traditional hosting solutions are laborious, time-consuming, and technical, requiring expert resources.

So on the face, they look like cheap solutions, but the costs to run and maintain them are high.  Additionally, technical cloud hosting options like AWS requires expert monitoring.

With a managed cloud hosting solution, the technical aspects of managing and keeping the servers running are taken care of, freeing up your time and resources for other projects.

A relevant example is Inspry’s case – an agency that chose Cloudways and eliminated the need for a server administrator.

Furthermore, if you choose Cloudways as your managed cloud hosting platform, you can unlock several add-ons, such as SafeUpdates (auto updates of WP plugins), discounted Cloudflare prices, 24/7 support, etc.

These add-ons enhance your workflow efficiency and enable you to redirect your extra resources to other productive projects.

On top of it, with Cloudways, you can choose from five cloud hosting options, including Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud, all on one platform. So instead of managing different providers for different clients, you can manage them all under one umbrella.

Now that you know the benefits of managed cloud hosting and are ready to migrate your and your client’s websites, let’s explore how you can turn the costs into constant revenue streams.

How to Turn Your Agency’s Cloud Hosting Costs Into Revenue

Maximizing your agency’s profitability doesn’t have to be a daunting task. With a few simple steps, you can easily turn hosting costs into revenue streams. Here’s how you achieve it.

Evaluate Your Hosting Needs and Expenses

Assessing your hosting needs and expenses is the first step to profit generation. Since many agencies do not consider hosting as a revenue source, they often don’t pay much attention to the costs.

Every agency’s hosting needs are unique; thus, evaluating hosting costs is crucial for profitability.

Hosting costs may vary depending on factors such as business model, traffic inflow, and data size. Add to it the time you’ll spend ensuring your clients’ websites are always up and running at all times.

Identify your hosting needs and estimate the cost associated with meeting them. As an agency, you understand that each client is different, and some may require affordable DigitalOcean plans, while others may need the costly AWS.

Also, consider add-ons that your clients may need to ensure their website stays safe, backed up, and loads faster. All those come at an additional cost.

To have close estimates of either your or your customers’ hosting prices, be sure to check out our price calculator. It’ll give you the estimates based on your requirements and share the prices of other managed hosting solutions with you.

Explore the Web Hosting Savings Calculator for Free

Once you have determined your hosting expenses, it’s time to get to the juicy part – making money with managed cloud hosting.

Monetize Managed Cloud Hosting

Managed cloud hosting offers various revenue-generation opportunities. One way is to provide hosting services as part of your agency’s package to enhance the value of your services and make your clients more likely to choose you over your competitors.

For instance, you can package hosting services with website design and development or even website management. By doing this, you’re offering a complete solution to your clients, and they’ll be more likely to choose you over competitors.

You can also increase profits by upselling hosting services as part of your client’s website maintenance or support plans, ensuring a steady recurring revenue stream.

Choose the Right Managed Cloud Hosting Provider

Choosing the right managed cloud hosting provider is crucial for your agency’s profitability. Ensure your selected provider offers reliable hosting with high uptime guarantees, scalability, and reasonable pricing.

Cloudways is an excellent example of a managed cloud hosting provider that provides dependable hosting solutions, flexible pricing, and several add-ons to improve your clients’ experience.

With Cloudways, you can manage multiple cloud hosting options under one platform, simplifying management and reducing costs.

So, transforming your agency’s hosting costs into revenue streams requires an assessment of your hosting needs and expenses, monetizing managed cloud hosting, and choosing the right provider. Following these steps can increase your agency’s profitability while delivering exceptional client hosting services.

What Are the Agency’s Best Practices for Maximizing Hosting Revenue?

Managed cloud hosting offers multiple revenue-generation opportunities for your agency. This section discusses three ways to make money with managed cloud hosting.

Let’s review them, so you can see which one fits your agency model the best and start earning right away.

Reseller Hosting

Many agency clients prefer to leave the technical management to their agency.

Even with the simplest one-click installation platform like Cloudways, most clients would want to focus on the business and let the agency do the technical management.

That leaves a gap you can fill by becoming a hosting reseller and selling hosting at the price of your choice.

You can also become a reseller by renting server space from a hosting provider like Cloudways and selling it to your clients at a premium price. This allows you to handle all the support for your clients and get paid a surplus for this service.

Ownership Transfer and Referral Programs

One viable option for agencies to generate revenue from managed cloud hosting is through referral programs.

Many agencies prefer to avoid dealing with the billing and hosting management complexities. However, they can still profit by recommending a reliable hosting platform.

As an agency, you can provide a referral link to your clients, which they can use to purchase the hosting platform you recommend. And you will receive a commission for every purchase made via that referral link.

Alternatively, to simplify the process for your clients, you can set up the hosting account under your agency’s name and transfer the ownership to the client. This approach requires additional effort, but you can charge a premium for this service.

Affiliate Programs

The third way, and probably the easiest way, is to become an affiliate. As an affiliate, you receive a commission for each sale made through your unique referral link.

Choosing a reliable managed cloud hosting provider with high uptime guarantees, scalability, and flexible pricing is essential to maximize your hosting revenue.

Cloudways is an excellent example of a managed cloud hosting platform that offers reliable hosting solutions and various add-ons to enhance your clients’ experience. You can earn up to $125 per sale with the Cloudways web hosting affiliate program. And without any hosting responsibilities. Awesome, right?

By implementing these best practices, your agency can increase profitability and offer top-notch hosting services to clients.

See How Agencies Earn Revenue Using Cloudways Agency Hosting

Different agencies use the Cloudways agency hosting to earn revenues in distinct ways.

Here are a few examples:

1. Freestyle Digital: This agency packages Cloudways hosting costs in the monthly website costs for the customers. They then look out for support and updates on behalf of the customers.
2. Click Active: This agency cumulates hosting services with other ancillary services and charges clients for the total package.
3. Noou: This agency has a flexible approach to hosting client’s websites. If the clients want control over the hosting, that’s done. If the client wants to do nothing with hosting and just focus on the business, then that’s an option as well.

While reviewing these case studies, see how Cloudways is helping them deliver better client results.

How Much Does Cloud Hosting for Agencies Cost?

While different cloud hosting platforms have varying prices for agency hosting, Cloudways stands out with its flexible “Pay As You Go” pricing model.

With highly scalable resources, you can increase or decrease bandwidth and server resources based on website traffic demands.

For example, if you are an ecommerce agency, you’d know that ecommerce stores experience traffic surges during the holiday seasons. To handle that without problems, you can scale up the resources for the season.

And when the traffic goes back to routine, you or the client can scale down and pay lesser.

So basically, you only pay for what you use and don’t spend unnecessary money.

Wrapping Up – Don’t Sleep on a Lucrative Profit Stream

Agencies can make a bank with hosting revenues.

With agency profits shrinking daily and the market becoming highly competitive, some thousand dollars earned via agency hosting service based revenues will look really good on your profit statements.

Fortunately, agencies can achieve this in several ways, including freeing up resources, becoming affiliates, or reselling hosting services.

And Cloudways offers various options to optimize agency hosting revenues that can help you build a passive revenue stream. By taking advantage of these options, not only can agency hosting costs be reduced but generate additional income in the process.

Don’t wait any longer to start earning from your cloud hosting expenses. Sign up with Cloudways today and convert your hosting costs into hosting revenues.

Raza Aslam Lakhani

I’m a digital content producer at Cloudways. I’m also a hodophile- always ready to explore new places and cultures.

Other than that, I play guitar and love to indulge myself in deep, meaningful conversations. Always looking for opportunities to learn new things.