I had my
freelance
business
since about 2014 if I remember correctly. It never made much by way of revenue, but it was always good to have something to write an Invoice.
Back then was building the website of a driving school without much knowledge besides basic PHP. The page is still active (sadly) and I still have to do some maintenance stuff from time to time. The thing is, it is based on really rubbish (I didn’t know better)
PHP
code and it is running on the oldest possible version of the hosting provider (I think 5.6).
When it comes to breach ability I’m sure there would be enough holes to work through the basic authentication system I’ve implemented back then.
Besides that really old side I’ve got a managed server by a large
hosting
Company in Germany. The managed was a great upgrade from the root server I had before, because it meant I didn’t have to take a look at operating system and software change logs.
On that managed server all my sites are running and also a few sites from customers of my freelance business. Ever since GDPR did came into place I have a bad feeling if I’m doing everything needed by it.
The thing is, although several customers pay a good portion of the server it still isn’t self paying which means it is a loss for my freelance business. And besides that there is the
GDPR
burden.
So at the end of last year I decided I want to kill the server by the end of 2022 and thus will be informing all my customer that they will need to look for another hosting provider. It is already the sixth of January and I still didn’t manage to send out the emails.
I will be doing a
paramedic
Night Shift today so the plan will be to send out at least some emails (I’ll have to craft one for every customer specifically based on their tech level). Hopefully everyone will understand my intentions behind shutting down my services. It just doesn’t make sense for me anymore to waste money.
Sure I will still be hosting some of my stuff and that from my family, but I can do that on way cheaper hosting solutions. No need for an expensive managed server.
GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation that was enacted by the EU a few years back. It is basically a ruleset on how to deal with data and breaking the rules (for example getting breached and not having a security team) can be really expensive for companies (https://www.tessian.com/blog/biggest-gdpr-fines-2020/).
The managed server I have cost about 70€ a month. Every site I'm hosting is running on that machine, including email and databases. To be cost-effective I would need at least around 20+ paying customers. I've got around 10. The thing is if I had risen the prices in the past many customers would have already switched to another hosting provider (probably the one I'm using myself :) ).
And then there is always the thought in my back on getting fined via the GDPR which is probably the main reason I want to quit hosting customers sites. Because I've they would be breached because they use an outdated WordPress version for example I could also be held liable as I'm the hosting provider.
Ever since that law passed hosting isn't viable for a small company like my freelance business anymore. Selling services is the new hot stuff. But who has time for that? :)
This site runs on PHP
I imagine thet sites/apps you're hosting can all just be shoved onto a single machine since the traffic ought not to be high?
GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation that was enacted by the EU a few years back. It is basically a ruleset on how to deal with data and breaking the rules (for example
getting breached and not having a security team) can be really expensive for companies (https://www.tessian.com/blog/biggest-gdpr-fines-2020/).
The managed server I have cost about 70€ a month. Every site I'm hosting is running on that machine, including email and databases. To be cost-effective I would need at least around 20+ paying customers. I've got around 10. The thing is if I had risen the prices in the past many customers would have already switched to another hosting provider (probably the one I'm using myself :) ).
And then there is always the thought in my back on getting fined via the GDPR which is probably the main reason I want to quit hosting customers sites. Because I've they would be breached because they use an outdated WordPress version for example I could also be held liable as I'm the hosting provider.
Ever since that law passed hosting isn't viable for a small company like my freelance business anymore. Selling services is the new hot stuff. But who has time for that? :)