Running a WordPress website development business or agency is rewarding work. You get to take on new and exciting challenges, you can help businesses get online, and most of the time, you get to be your own boss.

But managing website projects in the development phase can also be a lot of work, especially if you collaborate with others for coding, design, or content, and hand off finished sites to clients who require help figuring out their hosting needs.

To address multi-site management challenges, SiteGround, one of WordPress.org’s recommended hosting providers, has developed a new set of website management interfaces built with the specific needs of freelance developers and agencies in mind. Here is how to use the new tools and interfaces to streamline your client work and take on more projects.

Create sites quickly and manage them in one place

When you’re creating, contributing to, and maintaining multiple sites at once, the last thing you want to do is manage several login credentials. With SiteGround’s new Client Area, you can access and manage all your sites from one dashboard.

Managing sites this way saves so much time because you can quickly toggle between sites, without having to log out and in again. Spin up a fresh WordPress or WordPress + WooCommerce installation quickly with a few clicks. If your business model includes providing maintenance after a website is launched, then you’ll appreciate the convenience of managing multiple sites under one roof and being able to quickly access all your client sites.

Build sites as a team

If you work on sites that have to be accessed by collaborators, sub-contractors, or your agency colleagues, you’ll know that a single login used by multiple people can get messy.

SiteGround’s Client Area is designed to allow each collaborator to have their very own access. This was developed with security in mind, so that user access can be easily granted or revoked without affecting other people’s access or login information.

If you want to add a collaborator to a site, such as a designer, developer, content creator, or a team member, all you have to do is send them an invitation via the Client Area’s site management screen. They’ll see all the sites they collaborate on from their own separate account.

If you build sites for clients but want to continue maintaining the site after handing it off, you can choose to stay on as a collaborator when the main site management has been transferred to your client.

Ship sites to clients with the right hosting package

Delivering a completed site is a great feeling and it’s easy to transfer ownership using
SiteGround’s Transfer Ownership tool. From the Client Area’s site management screen, select Transfer Ownership from the dropdown menu, add your client’s information, choose hosting recommendations, and send the invitation.

Many clients look to their developers to help them choose a hosting plan and the site handoff is a great time to recommend the right package for the website you have built. When completing an ownership transfer, you can select the plan you want to recommend to your client, as well as the hosting extras they might need to power it up. This helps your client avoid the guesswork and allows you to easily communicate the information to them.

They don’t have to buy that plan to accept ownership of the site. It’s just a nice feature to help you streamline client communication and website handoff.

Build hosting into your business model

If your clients rely on you to help them figure out hosting, you may want to consider offering it as a bundle with your development services. With SiteGround, you can become a hosting reseller and offer white-label hosting to your clients.

Build the site and add them as a white-label client to give them access to their own separate site management panel: Site Tools. They can manage their site through the SiteGround interface, but without the SiteGround logo.

Take on more clients with optimized workflows

If you’re already a fan of SiteGround, you’ll be thrilled with the tools we have in place to streamline freelance and agency client work. Take advantage of the multiple features designed to increase your speed, collaboration, and hand-off of sites. The smoother the process, the more clients you’ll be able to take on.

Get started with SiteGround