When you have a website built do you pay for hosting or does the designer?

The company has to pay for the domain (hosting) then you pay the designer to build it. Although, the designer might have a domain that he’s willing to part ways with. Either way, the domain needs to be paid for (periodically, I believe) and maintained. I could be wrong, but I believe that’s the way it works.

You do. I can’t see why the designer would. He just writes the code, not pays to host it.

I have made sites where I deal with the hosting and maintenance (backing up the site/database). But I charge way more then it actually costs to deal with it.

But usually I help them set up the domain and hosting and install the site. Then it is hands off. But it is a good idea to talk with the person about it beforehand.

Like @johnpowell said, domain management and hosting is an added service. If you aren’t sure which domain name to choose, you can ask their advice but you should make the purchase yourself.

I have seen companies who cannot access their website because they let the designer or programmer handle everything and then they lost contact with the person.

You can purchase the domain from a site like GoDaddy or Network Solutions or Name.com. You might want to hold off on hosting until you know what the website will be built in, PHP and .NET have different server requirements.

The designer pays for nothing. Its the business’ job to pay for their own website.
If you get lucky and find a designer willing to pay for your web hosting, send them my way.

Fireside brings up a good point. I did a job once that used a few things that relied on things commonly used with a LAMP stack. The person had bought hosting that ran on a IIS based server. This was a huge pain in the ass since they didn’t know the difference and were reluctant to switch to a a different host. But eventually they did after I told them how much it would cost to get things working. Now I bang out those details before I write a single line.

You do. You should also pay the designer for his work as well.