Reader Question - Would you host your client's work on your website?
"We went live last night despite the fact that her host only gives her 5mg and the movie is 22mg.... The video remains on my domain and I also am redirecting my home site back to her index page.... Would you do this?... We couldn't let our client down, that's how we looked at it."
My Thoughts
Your final sentence says it all for me "We couldn't let our client down". When you're doing design work for someone, you need to remember customer service. In this situation, your customer needed extra space at short notice, and you provided that space for them.
Personally, I don't think customers pay an awful lot of attention to the URLs, so from a reader standpoint, you're fine leaving the video there. Doing the redirect was above and beyond, but certainly acceptable. Hopefully your client is appreciative.
What I wouldn't do is leave the video up there for a long time, and I would get something in writing detailing how long it's going to be on your site if it's going to be there more than a couple of days. Videos take a lot of bandwidth, and even if you're not over your limit right now, if you do this type of thing regularly, you could easily go over your limit. And unless you have some type of agreement with the client, you'll be stuck with the costs of hosting the video or other files you put on your site. There are many Web designers who did something nice for a client and later lived to regret that impulse.
Stories of Web Work Gone Wrong
- How Many Rewrites Will You Do?
- Sub-Contractors are Fun
- Add a Forfeit Clause to Your Contracts
- Additional Pain Included Free
- Have bad things happened to you?
Do you do temporary hosting for projects?
Do you do it all the time? Or only by contract? How would you advise Sandy? Let us know by posting your ideas in the comments here or in the forum.
Comments
I agree web hosting is soooo expensive if you buy a website at the same time.
Jon
http://www.smoothwebdesign.co.uk
I’ve been there (customer service), but how did the project get out of hand size-wise? Was the designer overambitious, salesman overzealous, or client wanted more than they can currently afford?
Actually, I think Sandy let the customer down. When she first noticed the technical issue, and solving the problem was outside her responsibility, she should have turned the problem, with recommendations, back to the customer.
This is a show stopper. If the video is at all popular, it will blow Sandy’s bandwidth budget, and will likely incur hefty penalties each month.
Most of the hosts that limit to 5 mb, that I am familiar with, are free hosting sites. Finding a free site that offers the increased web space and bandwith may not be possible. That means she let her customer walk into a series of problems, probably including unexpected ongoing expenses.
On the other hand, she might have checked out posting the video on YouTube or another video site. That works for some companies and individuals (”Does it Blend?” BlendTech ads became a cheerfully destructive entertainment channel that happens to showcase a very sturdy blender).
I have a couple of Amish customers that pay for design work, but are not allowed to pay for domain and hosting. So I provide hosting on my domain. This is a choice I made out of respect for their beliefs.
But I let customers know immediately when something won’t work. I have one customer that we tried several shopping carts 5 years ago - none would accommodate, at the time, the complicated carton/shipping flexibility needed by my client. At one point I recommended changing hosts, because Earthlink refused to correct an error in their Perl installation. (I self-host his site and reliability, performance, and flexibility all improved, for lower cost. I later moved my DraftResource.com site and got the same improvements.)
I’m new at this. I undersell myself constantly. However, I have some great customers that I’m really happy with and I’m carving a niche for myself with artists in NYC. So I’ll eat a few hours and do a few things I would probably tell a peer they were crazy for doing … I’m lucky enough to be learning as I’m working for myself and making my customers happy.
PS Every communication I had with my customer would include a new reference to a new hosting plan until their work was off my server though!
My clients have experienced so many hosting problems ultimately I have to resolve. What we’ve been doing for ages is providing hosting on our high speed servers. Clients pay us a nominal hosting fee, we take regular dbase backups, fix all bugs inhouse and thats definitely a big plus, irrespective of what the minority reports are.
I put everything in writing. Experience has taught me it’s the only way.
I would either go with the utube option or forget it. If your client is not in a position to pay a fee for hosting that is in line with they want to do, they will end up being a poor client. The next ’something for nothing’ that they will want is your time to do something complex.
If you think that their business idea has a great future, then get it in writing that you will be paid from future profits or some such arrangement.
Something for nothing usually backfires.
Customer service should include prompt, professional work and good advise.
“Something for nothing” is not good customer service in the long run.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Thank you, first Jennifer, for posting my question here. I would like to comment back to some.
1. I have 3000gb bandwidth for $6.95/month. The full video could have been downloaded 1.36 million times (give or take 10,000) before I incurred any penalty. Email me and I’ll let you know how I get a good deal.
2. My client had already made a plan to increase her capacity within the next 48 hours - and yes, she could afford it.
3. We did let the customer know right away what the problem was. We thought that we let her down by not finding out in advance how many mg her plan allowed her. This day and age, it didn’t even cross my mind that a host would only give 5mg while she was paying $50/year.
4. Thank you, Jennifer for saying that I went above and beyond with the redirect. I’m glad I did as I have google analytics and 2 people went to my home site from my video site and they were redirected to her home page.
5. to Daniel - She will only be paying extra for this bandwidth for about a month as I will be referring her to my hosting site.
6. to JK - yes.. we are looking into the youtube idea as it will help her video and website SEO.
7. My client had already preplanned a mass email to go out the very next morning (which I understand was unstopable). it was advertising this video. She would have lost an emense amount of prestige had the video not been available.
Thank you all for your comments! I appreciate the good and the bad!
Sandy K