Managing client domains and hosting
The client domain and hosting portfolio is the cheapest service an agency sells and the most expensive incident it can have. One expired domain costs you a whole client; forty domains kept in someone's head cost a working day a month. Below: what managing client domains and hosting actually looks like — what the register holds, how to rebill honestly, and how not to lose a domain.
Keeping the portfolio under control, in short
- Keep one single register: domain, registrar, client, expiry date, who pays.
- Put hosting and SSL certificates in the same list, with the same expiry dates.
- Set alerts 60, 30 and 7 days before expiry, addressed to a named person.
- Rebill the cost to the client with a management margin you state openly, not one you hide.
- Keep the registrar account in the client's name, with the agency as administrator.
What the register must contain
- The domain name, the registrar and the exact expiry date.
- The client who owns it and the contact who approves renewal.
- The hosting plan, the provider, the included resources and the renewal date.
- The SSL certificate: type, issuer, expiry date, automatic or manual renewal.
- Who pays: the agency, with rebilling, or the client directly, on their own card.
- The registrant's contact details, handled under GDPR (EU Regulation 2016/679) — these are personal data, not internal notes.
Table: 40 domains and 18 hosting plans
A typical small-agency portfolio: 40 .ro domains, 18 shared hosting plans and 12 wildcard certificates (the rest on free certificates, auto-renewed). For .ro, RoTLD's published annual tariff is €12 plus VAT and registrars typically retail it at €16–20 — roughly 90 lei per domain.
The 15% margin is not resale, it is payment for administration. One hour per domain per year is 40 hours, i.e. 6,000 lei at 150 lei an hour; the margin covers 2,466 lei of that. You cover the rest through automation — alerts and renewals in one place — not through a bigger margin.
Annual cost vs. rebilled, with a 15% management margin
| Line | Annual cost | Rebilled to the client |
|---|---|---|
| 40 .ro domains (90 lei/year) | 3,600 lei | 4,140 lei |
| 18 hosting plans (480 lei/year) | 8,640 lei | 9,936 lei |
| 12 wildcard SSL certificates (350 lei/year) | 4,200 lei | 4,830 lei |
| Total | 16,440 lei | 18,906 lei |
The risk of a lost domain
An expired .ro domain does not vanish immediately: it enters a window in which only the registrant can recover it, then becomes available to anyone. From that moment you no longer have a technical problem — you have a negotiation with whoever grabbed it.
The cost is not the 90-lei renewal fee. It is the site down, the email dead, the rankings gone, and a client with no reason left to trust you. One incident like that can cost a 4,000 lei/month retainer — 48,000 lei a year.
- Don't keep client domains in a personal registrar account tied to an inbox only one person reads.
- Don't rely on registrar emails: they land on an old address, or in spam.
- Check regularly that auto-renew is on and that there is a valid card behind it.
- Document, per client, who owns the account and who can authorise a transfer.
Common mistakes
- A spreadsheet owned by one person, updated whenever they remember.
- Rebilling with no margin: you administer 40 domains for free.
- Manually renewed SSL certificates, found expired by the client rather than by you.
- Domains registered in the agency's name, claimed back by the client on the way out.
- Hosting bought from five different providers: five invoices, five panels, five passwords.