Should I host client sites on my agency's Netlify account or give clients their own accounts?

Support
1

Hope you are well,
Just wanted to say I love Netlify. It’s a great product and has great support for SSGs. I have 3 questions I’d like your help with.

  1. I currently host multiple clients on my Netlify account but want to minimize data liability risks. What does Netlify recommend - should I create separate accounts for each client?

  2. I’m concerned that if one client’s site got compromised, it could potentially expose my GitHub organization where I host all client repositories. Is it safe to link different Netlify accounts to repositories in my organization’s GitHub?

  3. Can I use Netlify Teams to manage all client sites with one login, even if they’re on separate accounts?

2

@ReadingWebAgency As with many things, the answer is “it depends”.

It depends on things like:

  • which ‘plan’ you intend the sites to be using (free, starter, pro etc)
  • if the cost matters to your clients, or you
  • the size of your agency in developers or contractors/freelancers

For the main question “should an agency set up one Netlify account or an account per client”, I recommend only a single account, and I provided a detailed answer outlining why here:

https://answers.netlify.com/t/plans-or-setups-for-freelancers-serving-multiple-clients-on-netlify/91183/3

Note: The ‘Business Plan’ mentioned in some of the linked threads no longer exists.

To answer your specific questions:

  1. Netlify recommend multiple accounts (this may be because it’s more profitable)
    I recommend a single account (because it’s cheaper & easier to manage)

  2. How do you anticipate a client site will get ‘compromised’?
    Your deployed static sites aren’t an attack vector for your Netlify account
    You can link the same GitHub repository in multiple Netlify accounts.

  3. It’s possible to toggle between related accounts
    However it still is ‘more work’ than just having a single account

Note: In general, to prevent abuse of the ‘free plan’ you aren’t supposed to create multiple accounts for yourself, and if the system detected you doing that, then some of your accounts could get (at least temporarily) suspended.