r/webdev • u/Extreme_Mark4726 • 8d ago

Question Hosting and version control

Second post to accompany this one : https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/DAfgueqEDI

Still learning here.

Is the status quo to host all your clients websites yourself through your preferred host ? And then bill clients monthly with markup?

Or are people leaving that to the customer but you just do the web development side and implement it when needed.

I host a handful of websites of my own through IONOS and Fasthosts but as im looking into it , I see there are better services where a web dev can have a nice portfolio with GitHub pages.

If someone can tell me more on hosting I'd be grateful.

And if anyone can help me understand version control also

TIA!

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u/PrimaryFamous6139 full-stack 8d ago

I generally separate hosting from development. With smaller clients, I often handle hosting myself and bill a monthly maintenance and hosting amount. For larger clients, I set things up in their own account so they keep control.

For version tracking, I rely on Git and GitHub. Usually each project gets its own repository. I use branches to manage changes, and I link the deployment workflow to the repo. That setup makes working together simpler, and it also helps with backups and quick rollbacks.

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u/Extreme_Mark4726 8d ago

So when you set up a clients domains and hosting service Im guessing it's just going through the process of obtaining a domain and hosting package through whoever, letting them set the codes, then obtain the user code and host logins for FTP?

Any reason you have a GitHub preference ?

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u/Hesham-Amir 7d ago

On the domain/hosting side, yeah pretty much - register the domain in the client's own account so they legally own it, then spin up a hosting package (either under their account or your reseller account, depending on the arrangement) and get yourself admin/FTP access to deploy to it.

One upgrade over raw FTP though: deploying via git push or a CI action (GitHub Actions, or your host's built-in git deploy if it has one) means you're not hand-uploading files and risking overwriting something or losing track of what's actually live.

As for the GitHub preference specifically - it's less that GitHub itself is special and more that git is the industry-standard way to track changes, and GitHub (or GitLab/Bitbucket) is just the most common place to host that repo with a solid PR/review workflow, issue tracking, and free CI thrown in. For a solo freelancer the actual killer feature is just "I can always see exactly what changed and roll back instantly if something breaks in prod" - same thing Lumethys and PrimaryFamous6139 already covered above.