# Freelancer hosting Source: https://www.fortrabbit.com/solutions/freelancer-hosting Created: 2026-03-15 Reviewed: 2026-07-20 > Managed PHP hosting for freelance web developers — small-site pricing, post-paid billing, client handover and hosting resale in one account. A freelance web developer runs the whole company alone: development, operations, project management, invoicing — and answering the phone when a client thinks the site is down. Hosting touches every one of those jobs. It decides how many hours a month go into work that never appears on an invoice, what a small client is asked to pay for a small site, and how gracefully a project changes hands when the work ends. We have sat on that side of the table ourselves [in the past](/us/history) — this platform is the hosting we wanted back then. It runs the software freelance projects are built with: [Craft CMS](/software/craft-cms), [Kirby](/software/kirby), [Statamic](/software/statamic), [Laravel](/software/laravel), [WordPress](/software/wordpress) and [more](/software). ## Unbillable hours are lost income An employed developer who spends an afternoon patching a server costs the employer some money. A freelancer who spends the same afternoon has lost the income directly — server care is the textbook case of work no client sees and no client wants to pay for. Here, the platform layer is our job: operating system, web server, PHP runtime and MySQL are operated and kept current by us. The application stays under the developer's control — we deliberately [do not update installed software](/platform/no-x), because nobody wants a CMS update they did not schedule landing in the middle of a client launch. [TLS certificates](/features/free-certificates) for custom domains are issued and renewed automatically, at no charge, so certificate renewals disappear from the calendar entirely. There is also no colleague down the hall. When something is unclear, [support](/benefits/get-support) is a direct chat with the people who operate the platform — no outsourced first level. The median first response is under two hours during business hours (CET). That is not a 24/7 promise, and we say so. It is a second pair of experienced eyes for a business that otherwise has exactly one. ## Priced for what a small client will pay A small business site only supports a small hosting bill, and the freelancer is the one who has to defend that line item. Pricing here is [component based](/pricing/details): PHP, traffic and storage are required, everything else — MySQL, backups, jobs — is booked only where a project needs it. The smallest possible combination starts at €2.50 per month, and the smallest traffic plan covers 96% of websites, so a brochure site does not subsidize capacity it will never use. There are no per-seat charges and no feature tiers on top. Collaboration — teams, invited people, shared payment methods — is included at no extra cost, so bringing a client into the dashboard or a colleague into a project never changes the bill. The bill follows the app's resource usage, not the size of the business around it. Current numbers live on the [pricing page](/pricing). ## The long tail of old client sites Years of freelancing accumulate a trail of small sites that still matter to their owners but barely justify their keep. Component pricing lets each of those apps shrink to what it actually does: pick the smallest PHP plan, drop the components that are not used, and the site idles at a price its owner will accept. :ContentLink{text="Autoscaling" prefix="docs" href="/platform/billing/autoscaling"} is optional per environment — switched off, the price is fixed, with the honest trade-off that an app exceeding its booked plan goes offline rather than quietly costing more. An email warning goes out before a limit is reached. Billing is pro-rated by the day, so a site retired today stops costing anything tomorrow — and with a local backup in hand, it can be redeployed into a fresh app later if the owner changes their mind. The :ContentLink{text="reduce hosting costs guide" prefix="docs" href="/dev/how-to/reduce-hosting-costs"} walks through trimming a portfolio app by app. ## Cash flow in the right order Prepaying a year of hosting on behalf of a client is an interest-free loan to that client — one a one-person business is badly positioned to give. There are no upfront payments here at all: billing is post-paid, calculated after usage, invoiced monthly in arrears, with a minimum billing period of one day. Hosting costs land after the work they belong to, roughly when the client's own invoice does. There is no minimum contract term, and [cancellation](/benefits/cancel-any-time) takes effect immediately — a project that dies mid-month is billed for the days it existed, not for the quarter it was supposed to last. ## Resell hosting or let the client pay directly Both models are legitimate; which one fits depends on the client and on the appetite for sitting in the billing chain. Apps here are owned by [payment methods](/benefits/collaborate), not accounts, which supports either choice cleanly. To resell, keep the app on a payment method of the business and invoice the client — margin and terms are the freelancer's own affair. To step out of the money flow, the client attaches their own payment method and pays us directly, while deploy and SSH access stay granted per person and per app, separately from ownership. Switching from one model to the other mid-month does not bill anyone twice, since daily pro-rated billing splits the month at the day of the change. There is a [page for the client](/solutions/client) that explains their side in their language. ## Being the only one on call When a client site breaks at 2 am, a freelancer has no rotation to escalate to. Nothing removes that entirely, and we will not pretend otherwise — but the platform shrinks the list of things that can page one person. The infrastructure is monitored around the clock with on-call duties on our side, backed by a 99.5% uptime SLA, so a failing server is our night shift, not the developer's. What remains in one person's hands is the application itself, which is the part that person knows best. The optional [backups component](/features/backups) adds restore points for the days when the fastest fix is going back to yesterday. ## Stopping without abandoning the client Every maintenance arrangement ends eventually — a career change, a full order book, or a client who has outgrown a one-person setup. The exit does not have to strand anyone. Ownership of an app can [change hands](/benefits/hand-over) without the app moving: code, database, domains and certificates stay where they are while billing and responsibility transfer to the client or to a successor. Access works the other way around too — it can be revoked, or granted to the next developer, without touching the running site. The client keeps their website in every version of the story. And when the direction of growth is the opposite one — more work than one person can carry — the team side of the same machinery is covered on the [agency page](/solutions/agency-hosting). ## Migration is self-service, on purpose We do not migrate sites on anyone's behalf — [no free migrations](/platform/no-x) is a stated principle, not an oversight. A migration performed by somebody else is a migration nobody understands afterwards, and for a site whose entire maintenance department is one person, that person needs to know where everything lives. The way in is documented: the :ContentLink{text="migration guide" prefix="docs" href="/dev/how-to/migrate-to-fortrabbit"} covers the general path, the [alternatives pages](/alternatives) carry cutover notes per provider, and support is reachable throughout. The free trial takes the risk out of trying: every new app starts a [seven-day trial](/benefits/try-free), no credit card required, so a copy of a client site can run here and be shown live before anything is cancelled at the old host. ## FAQ ### Can I manage multiple client projects with one account? **Yes** — One login connects to multiple apps, teams and payment methods. Collaboration features map real-life business relations — code access and billing included. ### Can I hand a project over to my client? **Yes** — Transfer the app when the project is done. The client takes over billing and ownership, and can grant continued code access for maintenance. ### What does freelancer hosting cost? **It depends** — Pricing is component based and post-paid, with a one-day minimum billing period. The smallest possible combination starts at €2.50 per month. See the pricing page for real-world examples. ### Can my client pay fortrabbit directly? **Yes** — Apps are owned by payment methods, not accounts. A client can attach their own payment method and pay directly, while the developer keeps deploy and SSH access. ### Can I try fortrabbit before paying? **Yes** — Every new app starts a free trial — seven days, no credit card required. A copy of a client site can go live for review before anything is committed. ### Are there spending limits? **Yes** — Autoscaling can be turned off and a specific plan picked, so an app stays within a set budget instead of scaling on its own. ### Do you migrate my sites for me? **No** — Migration is self-service by design, with a step-by-step guide and reachable human support. Whoever performs the migration understands the hosting afterwards. --- - [Collaborate](/benefits/collaborate) - [Hand over](/benefits/hand-over) - [For the client](/solutions/client) - [Migration guide](/dev/how-to/migrate-to-fortrabbit)