Ship the work. Skip the ops desk.
Host every client site on one flat rate you can pass through or resell, hand out zero consoles for a client to break, and let the iteration add-on absorb the steady stream of small change requests instead of your evenings.
Sound familiar?
Design and dev studios and freelancers hosting client sites.
A client's "quick fix" lands in your inbox at 9pm, and it's the fifth one this week.
You've become the accidental ops desk for every site you've ever launched — DNS, TLS, backups, all on you, none of it billable.
Explaining a surprise egress charge on a client's invoice isn't billable either.
A client asks for something small enough that quoting it properly would cost more than doing it.
Not you? Running one site for yourself rather than a roster of clients? Founders · No dev team or try the selector.
The week this replaces
Same situation, dimension by dimension — what it looks like now, and what changes.
| Dimension | Now | With CustomHosted |
|---|---|---|
| A new client site | Another host account to provision, another set of credentials to track down later. | One flat rate, provisioned the same day, on the same account as every other client. |
| Staging a change | Push to production and hope, or spin up a one-off preview by hand. | A dedicated staging environment per client, already wired in. |
| The client login | Hand over a hosting console you're now on the hook to support. | No console for the client — you stay the only point of contact, unless you choose otherwise. |
| The Tuesday-afternoon tweak | Squeeze it between billable work, or quote a special one-off for something tiny. | Roll it into the flat iteration add-on — brief it, an agent ships it, no special invoice. |
| Losing a client | Untangle their site out of your shared hosting before they can leave cleanly. | A free, documented handover — never a held-hostage migration. |
The loop, in your shape
The loop slots in wherever a studio already sits between a client and their site — bring your own build, or have CustomLabs design one, then let the other two roles carry the ongoing relationship.
- 01Build
CustomLabs
Bring a client site you already built, or have CustomLabs design and build the first version alongside you.
- 02Iterate
CodeHerder
The iteration add-on is the care plan you don't have to staff — every small client request gets briefed, opened as a pull request, reviewed, and shipped, no evening lost to a favour.
- 03Run
CustomHosted
One flat rate per client site, provisioned the same way every time, with per-client staging and no console for a client to break.
- Brief
- A client emails: swap the homepage hero for a seasonal campaign and update three prices before the weekend.
- Pull request
- Briefed in plain language, CodeHerder's agent opened a pull request against the client's real repo the same afternoon.
- Shipped
- Reviewed by the studio, merged, live before end of day — covered by the flat iteration add-on, not a special one-off invoice.
A care plan you don't have to staff
The part that actually protects a studio's margin isn't the hosting line — it's what happens to the small requests that never justify a proper invoice.
Every studio ends up running an unofficial care plan for the sites it launches, whether it means to or not — a client doesn't stop needing things the day the invoice is paid. The usual options are both bad: eat the small requests for free and watch your margin leak out one "quick fix" at a time, or quote each one properly and watch the client notice how much a two-line change costs when it's billed on its own.
The iteration add-on turns that unofficial care plan into a real, sellable line item. Fold it into your own hosting quote at whatever markup makes sense, and every small request — a copy edit, a new section, a config tweak — gets briefed in plain language, opened as a pull request against the client's actual repo, reviewed, and shipped. You keep the client relationship and the margin; the pull request queue is what changes.
It also means the client never gets handed a console. They see the site change; they don't see a dashboard with their name on it that they can misconfigure, or that makes it easy to walk to a different host. You stay the one point of contact, right up until — and even after — they don't.
A starting configuration
A studio's first client site: staging included, iteration add-on baked in from day one.
- Base plan
- Static Pro
- Additional static site
- +$10/mo
- Staging environment
- +$12/mo
- Iteration — CodeHerder loop
- +$25/mo
- Estimated total
- $62/mo
Agencies questions
The questions this situation raises on its own. General hosting questions live on the homepage.
01Can I resell this to my clients?
Yes — pass the flat rate through at whatever margin you choose, or fold it into your own retainer. We never contact a client directly unless you want us to.
02Do clients get their own login?
Not unless you want them to. By default you're the only account holder — a client gets the site, not a console to break.
03What happens if a client leaves?
A documented handover, free, any time. Nothing is held hostage in a proprietary dashboard.
04Does the iteration add-on cover design work?
It covers implementation — copy edits, config changes, small features shipped as a pull request. Design decisions still come from you or your client.
05Can several client sites sit on one account?
Yes — the Static Pro tier is built for multiple sites and environments under one account, with per-client staging.
Keep exploring
- Environments
What "per-client staging" actually is — the address, who can reach it, and how a client sees a change before it ships.
- The real cost of a website
Where the agency-retainer model breaks down against a flat iteration add-on.
- Pricing
The full rate card — flat, predictable, and posted in the open.
- Access
The "no console for the client" line above, as a matrix — exactly who can reach a client's stack, and who cannot.
Ready to start?
Tell us what you're running — one fixed monthly rate, within a business day.