Most agencies treat hosting as a pass-through cost, marking up the wholesale price by 20-30%. This leaves money on the table because clients don’t buy hosting — they buy reliability, speed, and the assurance that someone competent is managing their digital infrastructure.
Cost-plus pricing
Simple but commoditises your service. When the client sees £30/month for hosting and £20/month for ‘management’, they question the management fee. The hosting component becomes a line item to negotiate down.
Value-based pricing bundles hosting into a comprehensive care plan. Instead of itemising hosting at £30 and management at £20, you offer a £150/month ‘Website Care Plan’ that includes hosting, updates, security monitoring, monthly reporting, and priority support. The hosting cost is invisible.
Tiered Pricing
A £75/month ‘Essential’ plan covers hosting and updates. A £150/month ‘Professional’ plan adds performance optimisation and monthly strategy reports. A £300/month ‘Enterprise’ plan includes priority SLA and dedicated account management.
UK agency benchmarks show successful care plans averaging £100-200/month per client site, with hosting costs representing 20-30% of the plan price. At 50+ clients, the recurring revenue from care plans often exceeds project revenue — creating a stable, predictable business. View wholesale pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How should agencies price hosting in their retainer?
Price hosting as a managed service, not a pass-through cost. UK agency benchmarks show successful care plans averaging £100-200/month per client site, with hosting costs representing 20-30% of that figure. The remaining 70-80% covers management overhead, reporting, and support availability. Clients are not buying hosting — they are buying reliable infrastructure managed by someone they trust.
Should agencies resell hosting or use it as a pass-through?
Reselling provides more control and margin — you buy wholesale from the hosting provider and bill the client your own rate, typically 2-4x the wholesale price. Pass-through simplifies billing but gives clients a direct exit path. For agencies building long-term retainer businesses, reselling is the better model: it creates recurring revenue, locks in the client relationship, and allows bundling hosting with management under a single monthly fee.
What is a tiered hosting care plan for agencies?
Tiered care plans offer different service levels at different price points: a basic tier (hosting + automated updates + backups, £75-100/month) for less complex sites, a professional tier (basic + performance monitoring + monthly reporting + priority support, £150-200/month) for active business sites, and an enterprise tier (professional + dedicated account management + SLA + on-call support, £300+/month) for high-value clients. Tiers serve different client segments and prevent the problem of under-pricing maintenance for complex sites.
How do agencies justify hosting costs to price-sensitive clients?
Frame hosting as insurance rather than a cost. Calculate the client’s downtime cost: for a site generating £5,000/month in leads, one day of downtime costs approximately £165 in lost leads plus emergency fix costs of £150-500. A single incident justifies 2-3 months of managed hosting fees. The economics favour managed hosting for any commercially active site.
What is the right margin for agencies reselling WordPress hosting?
Typical agency margins on resold hosting are 100-300% of wholesale cost. At WP Pro Host wholesale rates, an agency might charge clients £75-150/month for a hosting package costing £25-45/month wholesale. Higher margins are justified by more comprehensive management (proactive monitoring, regular reporting, incident response) and stronger SLA commitment to clients. Do not price purely on margin percentage — price on the value delivered and what clients in your sector will pay for reliable managed infrastructure.