Recurring revenue is the goal for most agencies. Project work pays well, but it's unpredictable — every month you're starting from zero. Hosting changes that. A client paying €30/month for managed WordPress hosting is revenue that renews without a proposal.
This post covers how agencies are building hosting businesses on top of NoDevZone's infrastructure, with real numbers from the setup process.
The traditional hosting agency problem
Most agencies that offer "managed WordPress hosting" are reselling shared hosting — they have a reseller account with a hosting provider and mark up the cost. This works until:
A client site gets hacked. On shared hosting, a compromised site can spread to others. You're responsible for a breach you couldn't prevent.
A client's site goes down. You're at the mercy of the hosting provider's support queue. Your SLA to the client depends on someone else's response time.
A client needs something custom. Want to install a specific PHP extension? Run a cron job at a specific interval? On shared hosting, the answer is usually no.
Container-based hosting solves all three. You control the infrastructure, you control the isolation, you control the configuration.
What you're selling
A managed WordPress hosting package from an agency typically includes:
- WordPress hosting on a reliable server
- Automatic backups (daily or weekly)
- SSL certificate management
- WordPress core and plugin updates
- Basic security monitoring
- Support for "something broke, can you fix it?" questions
The market rate for this varies by market and client type: €20–80/month for small business clients, €100–300/month for larger sites or clients with more support needs.
The cost of providing this with NoDevZone infrastructure is the server cost divided by the number of clients. A VPS that comfortably runs 20–30 containerized WordPress sites costs €40–80/month. At 20 clients paying €40/month, that's €800 MRR against €60 server cost.
Month 1: infrastructure setup
Week 1: Server provisioning
You need a VPS with sufficient RAM and CPU for the number of sites you plan to host. Docker containers are efficient — a WordPress site at low traffic uses roughly 256MB RAM. A 4GB RAM VPS can comfortably run 10–12 sites with headroom.
Providers commonly used for this: Hetzner (best price/performance in Europe), DigitalOcean (good documentation, slightly higher cost), OVH (good European options).
Install Docker, Docker Compose, and the NoDevZone server agent. This is a one-time setup documented in the NoDevZone hosting docs.
Week 2: First test sites
Provision 2–3 test sites to verify the setup. Check:
- SSL is issuing correctly
- Subdomains resolve
- WordPress admin is accessible
- NoDevZone plugin is active and connected
Run a load test on one container to verify resource limits are working — a site under load shouldn't affect other containers.
Week 3: Backup system
Configure automated backups. The NoDevZone infrastructure backs up each container's data volume on a schedule you configure. Backups should go to a location separate from the main server — S3, Backblaze B2, or another VPS.
Test restore from backup before putting any client sites on the server. You should be able to restore a site from backup in under 10 minutes.
Week 4: Monitoring and alerting
Set up uptime monitoring for each site (UptimeRobot's free tier works for this). Configure alerts to your phone or Slack for any site that goes down.
Add basic server monitoring — CPU, memory, disk usage — so you know when you're approaching capacity.
Month 1: first clients
While infrastructure is being set up, start conversations with existing clients about moving to your managed hosting.
Good candidates:
- Clients whose sites you built and maintain
- Clients on bad shared hosting who have had downtime issues
- Clients who have mentioned wanting "someone to handle the technical stuff"
The pitch is simple: "I'm moving my hosting clients to a new infrastructure that gives you a dedicated environment — your site won't be affected by anyone else's traffic or security issues. Same price as you're paying now, better service."
For new sites built with NoDevZone, hosting is a natural upsell — the site is generated on the infrastructure anyway, and leaving it there is the path of least resistance.
The support workflow
The main ongoing cost of running a hosting business is support time. The common issues and how container hosting affects them:
Site is slow: with shared hosting, slow can mean "other sites are using the resources." With containers, if a site is slow, the cause is on that site — a plugin, a query, a traffic spike. Easier to diagnose, easier to fix.
Site is hacked: with container isolation, containment is automatic. The compromised container is isolated from others. You take it offline, restore from backup, scan for the entry point, close it.
Plugin update broke something: restore from the pre-update backup, identify the problematic plugin, update the others, leave the problematic one pending. With daily backups, the restore point is always recent.
SSL certificate expired: Let's Encrypt certificates renew automatically. If renewal fails (DNS issue, server unreachable), you get an alert before expiry and can fix it.
Pricing tiers that work
A simple three-tier structure:
Basic — €29/month: hosting, SSL, weekly backup, core updates. Good for simple brochure sites with low traffic.
Standard — €49/month: hosting, SSL, daily backup, core + plugin updates, monthly security scan report. Good for business sites with regular content updates.
Priority — €89/month: everything in Standard, plus 2 hours of support/changes per month, priority response time. Good for clients who treat their website as a business tool.
Most clients land on Standard. Priority is for clients who would otherwise call you for every small change — it's better to formalize that as a retainer than to handle it ad hoc.
30 days later
A realistic outcome after 30 days of focused effort: 5–8 hosting clients, €200–400 MRR, infrastructure stable and tested. Not life-changing, but it's a foundation that compounds. Each new client project is an opportunity to add a hosting client. At 20 clients, the recurring revenue covers a meaningful portion of agency overhead.
The ceiling is determined by how many sites your infrastructure can handle and how much support time you're willing to commit. Most agencies find that 30–50 hosting clients is manageable without dedicated support staff.