Managing client hosting details for your clients can be a mess. Providing details to your developer can be a hassle. Historically, neither process has been easy for developers or clients.
The problem for digital agencies and developers managing client information
So you have a new client and are looking for a place to host their website. You’ve directed them to whomever you’ve used in the past to place an order. Whether you’re just starting with your client or you are ready for production, you’ll be asking for hosting account information soon. In come the flood of emails forwarded from their new hosting provider with usernames and passwords. You now have all sorts of credentials and links to everything you need to gain access. Then you need to have a system in place to store and manage this information for your team to use in the future.
Just when you think you have it all squared away, the client changes their hosting account password. You need FTP details or you need this that or another bit of information…it all becomes a mess really quickly.
Even under the best circumstances, this has always been a burdensome process to navigate. Given the size of your organization, the challenges often increase. Unless you have a reseller hosting plan, which has it’s own limitations, or you standup your own hosting infrastructure and management system, any hopes for streamlining this process are just out of reach.
The problem for hosting customers working with developers
You’re working with your designer to stand-up your new website. You love the look and feel and all the effort they’ve put into your new website. But now they’re asking you to order hosting and want all of these details about your account. Perhaps the process has become easy for some of you over time. But, if you’re like most, this is far from the case.
Now, your developer is asking for details. Maybe you’ve forwarded over some emails with information, but they’re asking you for more…your dev needs DNS info, database credentials, FTP details, or something else. To get what has been requested, you contact your host only to be directed in circles.
We often work with clients that aren’t sure what their developer is asking. Sometimes their developer reaches out to us directly to gain access. This can present a number of challenges and not only from the standpoint of security. It creates a lot of unnecessary churn and wasted time.
Simple Source makes managing hosting account access easy for digital agencies, web designers, web developers, and clients
We’ve experienced these pain points in the past. We understand very intimately how frustrating these obstacles can be when aiming to provide the best experience for your clients. And clients, we know you just want to get back to business.
In the past we’ve helped mitigate a lot of these issues by maintaining great relationships with our clients. We provided something called sub-accounts under your client’s profile to help you gain access. This was helpful, but did not go far enough as there was still a lot of information to maintain and details to verify when adding someone in as a sub-account under a client’s account.
As part of recently launching our new client area, we introduced a new users and accounts feature to our system which gives a response to the problems you may face at your current hosting provider. The new client area brings with it functionality to access and manage all of your client accounts from one simple login. This means no more lists of credentials to manage, or if you’re a hosting customer, you can now easily provide your developer with access to your hosting account information. No more hassle, no more mess to manage.
User Accounts – how do they work?
It’s pretty simple.
To give your developer access once you’ve placed your order and your hosting service is active:
- Visit User Management in your client area at getsimple.net
- Enter your developer’s email address under “Invite New User”
- Select permissions for your developer (what you want your dev to have access to do) – For example:
- For example, if they need to be able to interact with your hosting service to manage files, databases, etc. for your site, select “View Products & Services” and perhaps give them “Single Sign-on” access to be automatically logged into cPanel
- To provide them with the ability to edit DNS information, grant them access to “View Domains” and “Manage Domain Settings”
Given that your developer already has an account at getsimple.net, they’ll now only be permissioned for the access you have given them. Should they need to setup an account, they will be sent an email to register and will receive access once their account is activated.
If you are a developer working with a client, your client simply needs to follow the steps above to provide you with access.
It can’t get much more simple or secure.
Have questions or need help implementing this for your clients? Want to learn more about getting your developer setup for your hosting services? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to get you going.
