Client Names
Hosting for freelance web designers — The domains you hold for clients are a liability until you write them down
Every client name sitting in your personal registrar account is a renewal date you have quietly agreed to be responsible for.
The short answer
Keep clients as the registrant on their own names and separate their hosting properly: a multi-site plan for your own work to begin with, then Reseller 1 in the week the first client site arrives, because separated accounts are what professionalism looks like from the client's side.
Below: the register to keep, the handover that earns referrals rather than complaints, and what the domain part of a care plan is worth.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
24/7
Desk that answers
1-click
App installs
Free
SSL per account
Daily
Copies, all plans
Hosting margin is what funds most designers' move from freelancer to agency. A care plan sold over resold hosting is usually the first revenue they earn that arrives whether or not they raise an invoice that month.
The part that goes wrong first is not the hosting. It is the drawer of client domains that accumulated one at a time, registered in whichever account was open, with renewal notices arriving at an address you check on Fridays.
Never be the registrant on a client's name
Registering a client's domain in your own details is the commonest unforced error in this trade. It feels helpful, it takes ten seconds, and it makes you the holder of record for an asset that is not yours.
The consequences arrive later and all at once: a client who wants to leave and cannot, a dispute in which you hold something you should not, a renewal you forgot for a business you no longer work with.
Register in the client's name, with the client's contact details, and have them pay for it if at all possible. Manage it for them by all means — that is a service you can charge for. Just do not own it.
The register you should keep
One document, one row per name: the domain, who is named as registrant, which registrar it sits at, the renewal date, where the zone is answered from, who pays, and which of your clients it belongs to.
Update it when you take a new client on and read it properly twice a year. Nothing else you do this year will prevent as much trouble for as little effort.
Include the awkward columns too: whether auto-renew is on, whether the card behind it is yours or theirs, and which mailbox receives the registrar's notices. Those three are the entire anatomy of a lapse.
The handover that earns referrals
Clients leave. In a small trade the way they leave is worth more than the work you did for them, and a clean departure is almost entirely a domains job.
Confirm the registrant details are theirs. Unlock the name. Issue the auth code. Let their new registrar pull the transfer, and tell them plainly that the registry usually locks a name for sixty days afterwards, so they do not think you obstructed it. Remaining registration term carries over.
Their cPanel account lifts out intact separately, because it was never tangled up with anybody else's — which is the whole argument for one account per client rather than stacking sites as addon domains inside one.
Send them the zone as a written record as well. It costs you five minutes and it is the sort of thing people remember when somebody asks them for a recommendation.
The plan, and what the domain line is worth
The Reseller 1 plan: WHM above, one cPanel account per client beneath, private nameservers on your own brand, overselling permitted so you price on the value you add, and per-account resource ceilings.
Price the care rather than the disk. A monthly figure with updates and minor fixes wrapped in is the ordinary shape of it — and renewal watching, record changes and a documented handover are exactly the parts a client genuinely cannot do themselves.
Reseller hosting carries a seven-day refund window and renews at the rate you ordered at. Domain registrations sit outside any refund, because the registry charges the instant a name is secured.
Diligence, in both directions. Your clients are trusting you, and you are trusting a supplier. Check the hosting renewal figure is published rather than footnoted, put a real question to support at an awkward hour, and read the refund terms in full.
Then look the company up. Hosting & Domains is a trading name of Azaanex Inc., federally incorporated in Canada, with terms governed by Ontario law — the same check you would want a client to be able to run on you.
Then test it properly: move one of your own sites across free and work it hard for a fortnight before a client ever meets it.
Manage the name; do not own it
The most valuable thing a freelancer can offer around domains is competent management with the ownership left where it belongs. It is also the arrangement that never turns into an argument.
Mailboxes at your own name are part of the plan — mail is included, not sold back to you at the checkout.
- Clients named as registrant on their own names
- One cPanel account, and one zone, per client
- Private nameservers on your own brand
- Auth codes issued without a fuss
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Accounts that lift out whole
One cPanel account per client means a departure is a transfer rather than an untangling.
Your brand on the delegation
Private nameservers on your own domain, created with glue records at the registrar and included with reseller hosting.
A margin worth building on
Overselling permitted, so the care plan is priced on the value you add rather than on our rate card.
This page's conclusion, orderable
The Reseller 1 plan is this page's conclusion in product form — one rate, essentials inside, upgradeable in place.
On the public record
Azaanex Inc., federally incorporated in Canada — the diligence your own clients would want you to have done.
One rate, published in the open
What you order at is what you renew at, which is the only honest basis for a fixed monthly care price.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Fix the ownership rule and apply it to everybody
Client named as registrant, client's contact details, client paying where possible. You manage; you do not hold.
- 2
Build the register this week
One row per name: registrant, registrar, renewal date, zone location, payer, auto-renew status, notice mailbox. Read it twice a year.
- 3
Write the handover down before you need it
Unlock, auth code, transfer, sixty-day lock explained, cPanel account exported, zone sent as a written record. Same steps every time.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- One cPanel account, and one zone, per client
- Private nameservers on your own brand, glue records included
- Auth codes issued on request, with remaining term carried over
- Overselling permitted, with resource ceilings per account
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
- Money back within 7 days on reseller, 30 on hosting plans
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Should I register client domains in my own account?
Manage them there if the client prefers it, but do not be the registrant. The holder of record is the party the registry listens to, and being that party for somebody else's asset creates an obligation you did not price and a dispute you cannot win gracefully. Client named, client's details, ideally client paying.
What exactly do I hand over when a client leaves?
Confirmation that the registrant details are theirs, the name unlocked, the auth code, the cPanel account or a full backup of it, and a written copy of the zone. Tell them about the sixty-day registry lock that usually follows a transfer, so a normal rule does not look like an obstruction.
Why is the name locked after a contact change?
Because registries treat a change of registrant as a security event, and commonly start a sixty-day period during which the name cannot be transferred. It is an anti-hijacking measure, not a provider policy. If you know a client is leaving, do the transfer first and correct contact details afterwards.
How should I charge for looking after client domains?
As part of the monthly care line rather than as a separate item, because what you are selling is the absence of a lapse. Renewal watching, record changes and a documented handover are the parts a client cannot do, and folding them into a fixed monthly figure is both easier to sell and easier to honour.
Keep reading
Reseller Hosting
White-label WHM hosting with private nameservers on your brand, and one account per client.
Website Builder
Drag, drop, publish — a quick build for the client whose name you are only managing.
Changing provider? Work through this checklist beforehand.
A straightforward running order for a migration your visitors never spot: which files travel first, how to bring the mail across without dropping a single message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two errors that sit behind almost every outage we get called in to fix.
Manage the names. Leave the ownership alone.
One account per client, private nameservers on your brand, auth codes without a fuss, and a renewal figure that stays put.
View Reseller Hosting plans