Trade Counter
Hosting for nonprofit projects — Charity work is a support contract you forgot to price
Written for the agency, freelancer or technical volunteer carrying two or three community sites alongside paying work — and wondering where the hours went.
Straight answer first
Carry nonprofit sites on ordinary low-priced hosting rather than on an invented discount, put each one on its own account, and price the support explicitly even when the price is nothing — our charity hosting page sets out how we handle the cases where the budget genuinely is not there.
The reason to be structural rather than generous is that the hosting fee is never the expensive part. The expensive part is the unbudgeted support: the volunteer who has changed, the password nobody wrote down, and the update that broke a donation form on a bank holiday.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
NVMe
Disk under every account
Free
Domain for the first year
99.9%
Uptime target we hold
Flat
Cost across the renewal
Nearly every small agency ends up hosting something for nothing. A trustee is a friend, a cause is worth it, and a site appears on the account. Nothing wrong with that — but an unpriced site is still an obligation, and obligations accumulate whether or not there is a line for them on an invoice.
There is nothing unusual about what a community project needs from a server. What differs is the buying: a treasurer needs an invoice that survives an audit, a funder needs a cost that does not move mid-grant, and the whole arrangement has to keep working after the person who set it up moves on.
Cost the hours before you waive the fee
Write down what you are actually giving: the hosting, and then the hours. Updates, a backup check, one restore a year, two password resets, and the annual conversation about why the contact form is going to spam. That list is the donation. The plan fee is a rounding error next to it.
Once it is written down, you can be generous deliberately rather than accidentally. Waive the fee and cap the hours, or charge for the hosting and donate the labour — both are honest. What is not sustainable is an open-ended commitment nobody has ever counted.
Where the budget genuinely will not stretch, say so and ask. Our ordinary prices are low enough that we would rather talk about the project than stage a discount, and the charity hosting page explains our thinking on that at length.
What a treasurer and a funder need from the paperwork
Charities are audited by volunteers with limited patience. That means invoices that name the service, the period and the amount without a follow-up email, and a renewal figure that matches the joining figure so a three-year budget can be written once.
Every invoice sits in the client area to be read and downloaded, and auto-renewal is a toggle in the account rather than a phone call. That combination matters more to a treasurer than any specification on the plan.
Bundling is where nonprofit hosting quietly goes wrong. Grant money frequently pays twice for SSL, mailboxes and backups because they were sold as extras somewhere else. On these plans they are inside the plan price, which makes the budget line simple to defend.
Volunteer turnover is an access-control problem
The single most common failure on a community site is not technical. It is that the person who had the login has left, and the organisation has no route back in. Design for that from the beginning.
In practice: register the domain to the organisation rather than to an individual or to you; hold the hosting account in the organisation's name or under a documented arrangement with you; and put the recovery mailbox on a role address rather than a personal one. An account per project rather than a folder in your own account is what makes all three possible.
Then make recovery boring. Daily backups run on every account with restores you run yourself, so a volunteer's enthusiastic plugin experiment on a Sunday is an inconvenience rather than an incident.
Where community projects sit on our shelf
For a single community site, the Launch plan is the honest recommendation: one site, SSL, migration and mailboxes included, the first year of the domain covered on an annual order, and a renewal figure identical to the joining figure.
For an agency carrying several, reseller hosting is the structure that scales — a cPanel per project, quotas you set, daily backups per account and the ability to hand one over intact when a trustee finally recruits somebody technical.
Either way, run the usual checks on us. Read the refund terms, hold renewal against joining, ask the desk something hard before you commit, and look the company up: IGI Security Services Ltd, registered in England and Wales, with a public record.
Our interest in this, stated openly
We sell the hosting we are describing, and there is no referral fee behind the recommendation because there is no third party in it. Saying so lets the rest of the page be about structure and cost rather than about persuasion.
Low prices without a discount ritual is the position we have taken generally, which is also why there is no special nonprofit tier being dangled here — the ordinary price is already the answer for most projects.
- Invoices a treasurer can file without asking a question
- The renewal figure identical to the joining figure
- SSL, mailboxes and backups inside the plan price
- A conversation available when the budget genuinely is not there
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
Nothing sold back twice
SSL, mailboxes, backups and migration sit inside the plan price, so grant money is not spent on essentials a second time.
A budget line that holds
The renewal figure matches the joining figure, which is what lets a three-year funding application be written once and left alone.
An account per project
Separate accounts give each organisation its own quota, backup and login — the structure that survives a change of volunteers.
Recovery that does not need you
Daily backups with self-service restores mean a volunteer's Sunday experiment is an inconvenience rather than an emergency call.
A supplier with a public record
IGI Security Services Ltd, registered in England and Wales — the kind of thing a trustee is entitled to check before signing anything.
A route up if the project grows
Shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated sit in one catalogue, so a campaign that unexpectedly lands does not force a change of supplier.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Write down the donation before you make it
List the hosting and the hours separately, then decide which you are giving. Generosity you have counted is sustainable; generosity you have not counted turns into resentment about two years in.
- 2
Register everything to the organisation
Domain in the charity's name, recovery mail on a role address, hosting account either theirs or documented as yours. This is the step that survives the volunteer who leaves without warning.
- 3
Prove the restore once a year
Pick a quiet afternoon, restore the site from the daily backup, and note how long it took. A trustee asking 'what if it breaks' deserves a number rather than a reassurance.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- A separate account per community project, with its own quota
- Domain registered to the organisation, not to an individual
- Invoices available in the client area for a treasurer to file
- Auto-renewal switched on or off as a toggle in the account
- SSL free on every plan and reissued before it lapses
- The first year of the domain included on an annual order
- Daily backups with restores run by whoever holds the account
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- Softaculous one-click installs for WordPress and 240+ applications
- A charity hosting route for projects where the budget truly is not there
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Should I host a charity site for free, or charge and donate the labour?
Either works, provided you have counted both. The hosting fee is the small number; the support hours are the real donation. Decide which one you are giving, cap it, and say so to the trustees. An uncounted, open-ended commitment is the arrangement that quietly turns into resentment.
What does a treasurer actually need from hosting paperwork?
An invoice naming the service and the period, a renewal figure that does not move, and the ability to download the lot without emailing anybody. Invoices sit in the client area and auto-renewal is a toggle. That combination answers most audit questions before they are asked.
How do I stop a community site being lost when the volunteer leaves?
Register the domain to the organisation, put recovery mail on a role address rather than a personal one, and give the project its own hosting account rather than a folder inside yours. All three are cheap on the day you set them up and impossible to retrofit after the person has gone.
Do you have a nonprofit discount?
Our ordinary prices are already low and we would rather have a conversation than stage a discount ritual. Tell us about the project and the budget and we will work out what is possible; the charity hosting page sets out the thinking. What we will not do is inflate a list price in order to take something off it.
Read next
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Secure Hosting
Imunify360, account isolation and hardened defaults, for sites where a compromise would be a reputational problem.
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Carry community work without carrying it alone.
An account per project, invoices a treasurer can file, backups you can restore yourself, and a price that does not move at renewal.
See Charity Hosting plans