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Web Hosting for Advertising Agencies
Every agency sells the same promise: we will make your business look sharp and current. Then the prospect opens your own website, sees a client who left three years ago, and waits four seconds for the homepage to load. Web hosting for advertising agencies carries the work sample you get judged by, and that site is almost always the most neglected project in the building.
The site is the work sample
A prospect who is close to hiring you does two things. They ask somebody about you, and they open your website. That second look is not a courtesy visit. They are checking whether the people who claim to be good at this are good at it on their own behalf.
So the ordinary faults matter more here than they would anywhere else. A slow homepage on a plumber's site is a slow homepage. A slow homepage on an agency site is an argument against hiring you, made by you, in front of the person deciding.
- A site that takes several seconds to appear on a phone, while your deck talks about performance.
- A logo wall with a client who left, or worse, a client who now works with the agency you are pitching against.
- A blog whose most recent post is from two summers ago, sitting under a heading that says Insights.
- A contact form nobody has tested since the last redesign, quietly failing to send.
None of that is a hosting problem in the strict sense. All of it is visible on the thing you host, and the prospect does not separate the two.
Find out what is really slowing your site
Send us your agency site and we will tell you what is actually making it slow, the full-resolution artwork or the plan behind it. If the hosting you already pay for is fine, we will say so.
Why it is always last, and what to do about that
The reason is not laziness. It is that internal work has no client, no deadline and nobody to be annoyed when it slips. Billable work always wins that argument, every week, forever. If you are waiting for a quiet fortnight to redo the site, you will be waiting a long time.
The way out is to stop treating it as a project and start treating it as maintenance. A rebuild you never start is worth less than an hour a month spent on the site you already have.
The hour a month version
- Pull any client from the logo wall who is no longer a client. Do this the month they leave, not at the next redesign.
- Add one case study, or update the numbers on the one you already have.
- Open the contact form on a phone and send yourself a test. Confirm it arrives.
- Check that the software behind the site is current. If the site runs WordPress, the plugin list is the risk, not the platform.
That is it. It is not glamorous, and it beats a redesign that lives permanently in the someday column.
If your own site is on a plan somebody set up years ago and nobody has looked at since, find out who controls the domain before you touch anything else. Losing access to a domain you have used for a decade is the one mistake here that is genuinely expensive to undo.
Case studies are the page that wins the work
Ask any agency what their best-performing page is and, once they look, it is rarely the homepage. It is a case study. A prospect who reads a full case study is closer to signing than a prospect who read three pages of positioning copy.
The reason is simple. Positioning copy is a claim. A case study with a before, an after and a named result is evidence. The difference is the whole sale.
What makes one worth reading
- The situation the client was actually in, in one paragraph, in plain words.
- What you did, described so a non-marketer understands it.
- What changed, with a real figure the client is happy to have published.
- A quote from the person who signed the invoice, not from their intern.
One case study written like that is worth six written as a gallery of pretty screenshots. And a case study is ordinary web text with a couple of images, which means it costs you nothing in hosting terms. A page that wins business is the cheapest thing on the server.
The practical trap is images. Agencies publish full-resolution comps and campaign artwork because that is what is on the desktop, and the page ends up weighing more than the entire rest of the site. Resize before uploading. It is a two-minute habit that saves you from buying a bigger plan you do not need.
Work you may not be allowed to show
This is the awkward part of agency portfolios and it is worth handling deliberately rather than hoping nobody notices.
Some of your best work is under an agreement that limits what you can publish. Some of it was for a client who has since gone quiet, or been acquired, or ended badly. Some of it is white-labelled, done through another agency, and is not yours to claim at all. Agencies solve this by putting the logo up anyway and hoping. That is a bad plan, because the person most likely to notice is somebody in the same industry, and this industry talks.
- Check what your contract says about publicity and credit before the work goes on the site. If you are not sure how a confidentiality clause applies to a portfolio piece, ask your own adviser rather than guessing.
- Ask for permission in writing while the client still likes you, which is at the end of a successful project, not two years later.
- Where you cannot name the client, describe the category honestly. A regional healthcare group reads fine. A logo you are not cleared to use does not.
- For white-labelled work, agree the credit line with the agency that hired you and use their words.
There is a hosting angle to this too. If a case study has to come down, you need to be able to take it down quickly and be sure it is actually gone, including any staging copy, any duplicate page from an old redesign and any PDF version somebody uploaded. Knowing what is on your own server is part of the job.
Client sites, sorted out on purpose
Whether you are untangling a dozen client sites from one account or moving your own agency site off a host somebody set up years ago, we have been doing this in Buffalo since 1999. Call 716-771-2536.
Hosting client sites, or not
Sooner or later an agency has to decide whether it holds hosting for the sites it builds. Both answers are defensible. What is not defensible is drifting into it, which is what usually happens: one client asks, you say yes, and four years later you are the unpaid support desk for eleven websites you did not budget for.
Decide it on purpose, using the same questions you would ask about any new service line.
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Work out what you are really selling
Hosting a site is not the product. Being responsible for it is. That means somebody answers when a site is down on a Sunday, somebody keeps the software current, and somebody can restore last week's version when a client deletes a page. If you are not staffing that, you are selling a promise you cannot keep.
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Price it as a retainer, not a pass-through
Reselling a plan at cost plus a small margin loses money the first time a site needs real attention. Either charge a care fee that reflects the support, or pass the client straight to the host and stay out of the middle.
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Decide the ownership question in writing
Who owns the domain, who owns the account, and what happens on the day the relationship ends. Clients leave. The professional move is to hand over cleanly, and that is far easier when the client's domain was always in the client's own name.
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Keep backups you have actually tested
A backup nobody has restored is a rumour. Confirm what your plan keeps, how far back it goes and how a restore is triggered. The website backups page covers what to check.
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Separate the sites
Putting a dozen client sites in one account to save money means one compromised site is a problem for all of them, and it makes handing a single client over a much messier job than it should be.
If you do hold client sites, the software is where the risk sits. Most agency-built sites run WordPress, and most WordPress trouble is an out-of-date plugin rather than anything to do with the server. The habits that prevent it are on the WordPress security page. If you are inheriting a site somebody else built, taking over a website covers what to get your hands on first.
Every site you host is a site you are blamed for. That is fine if it is paid and staffed. It is a slow bleed if it is a favour.
Who should not buy more web hosting for advertising agencies
A freelance designer is not a small agency, and should not buy agency infrastructure.
If you are one person, your website is a portfolio, an about page, a contact form and maybe a few case studies. That is one of the lightest things anybody puts on a server. An entry shared hosting plan covers it comfortably, and the money you would spend moving up a tier buys you nothing a client will ever see.
- You do not need a reseller account to host your own single site.
- You do not need a large storage allowance. Resized portfolio images are measured in megabytes.
- You do not need a managed plan to run a site you personally update once a month.
- You almost certainly should not take on hosting other people's sites. One favour becomes a support obligation with no fee attached, and it will land on the week you are busiest.
The point where spending more starts to make sense is when other people depend on you. Several staff who all need email at the domain, client sites you are contractually responsible for, or a site with logins and forms that has to be watched. Until then, the honest answer is that your hosting is not the thing holding your business back. The case study you have not written is.
The other sibling worth reading is hosting for digital marketing agencies. That page is about the operational side, running client campaigns, landing pages and tracking on infrastructure you control. This page is about the agency's own site as a work sample. If you do both, read both.
How AldoMedia helps
AldoMedia has been building and looking after websites in Buffalo since 1999, which means we have been on both sides of this. We are an independent authorised reseller rather than the operator of the underlying platform, and we will tell you plainly when the plan you already pay for is the right one.
If you are moving an agency site off a host somebody set up years ago, the order of operations that keeps your email working through the change is on the website migration page. Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what your site runs on.
Common questions
Agency website questions
Our own site is three years old. Do we need a rebuild or just better hosting?
Usually neither, at least not first. Take down the clients who have left, resize the images that are making the homepage heavy, add one current case study and test the contact form. That is an afternoon and it fixes most of what a prospect actually notices. A rebuild you keep postponing helps nobody, and a bigger hosting plan does not make an out-of-date logo wall current.
Can we publish a case study for a client who is under an NDA?
That depends on what you signed, and it is worth asking your own adviser rather than guessing from the general shape of the clause. The safe pattern is to describe the category and the result without naming the client, and to get written permission for named work at the end of a successful project while the client still likes you. Putting a logo up and hoping is the version that goes wrong, because the people most likely to notice are in your industry.
Should we host our clients' websites?
Only if you decide to on purpose and charge for it. Hosting the file is trivial. Being the person who answers when a site is down on a Sunday, keeps the software current and can restore last week's version is the actual product. If that is staffed and paid as a care retainer, it is a good line of business. If it drifted in as a favour, it is an unpaid support desk that grows every year.
Our case study pages are slow. Is that the hosting plan?
Almost never. It is the artwork. Agencies upload campaign images at full resolution because that is what is on the desktop, and one case study ends up heavier than the rest of the site put together. Resize before uploading and the page gets fast without spending anything. If the site runs WordPress, also check how many plugins are loading on a page that is mostly text and pictures.
A client is leaving and their site is in our hosting account. What now?
Hand it over cleanly, because how you exit is something they will describe to other people. That is far simpler when the domain was always registered in the client's own name and their site was not sharing an account with eleven others. Confirm who controls the domain, take a full copy of the site and email, and agree a date. Doing this well has won more referrals than most portfolio pages.
We are a two-person shop. What plan do we need?
The entry shared plan, in nearly every case. A portfolio site with a handful of pages and resized images is one of the lightest things you can put on a server. Spend the difference on email at your own domain and on writing a case study, both of which a prospect will actually notice.
Related
Taking Over a Website
What to get your hands on before you inherit a site somebody else built and hosted.
How a handover worksWebsite Backups
What your plan actually keeps, how far back it goes, and how to prove a restore works.
Read about backupsEvery trade we cover is listed on hosting by industry.
Hero image: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.
Make your own site match your pitch
Tell us what your agency site runs on and we will tell you whether the plan you are paying for is the right one. If it already is, we will say so and point you at the two things worth fixing instead.
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Or call 716-771-2536 and tell us what the site has to do. If the plan you are already on is the right one, we will say so.