Your client wants to work with you but is happy to use their existing hosting provider. Fine. You ask them for the FTP and/or control panel access. They don’t have a clue what that is, so you explain and then they go off  to look for it.

Days or weeks later, they send you a copy of the original email from when they signed up with the provider, when the default passwords where sent. You know these will probably no longer work but you try them anyway. Email back to the client.. “no, the password must have been changed since, do you know who holds the current password?”  “Hmm, well it might have been Jim, but he left last year, or Bob, ah yes, Bob did some work on our original site. I think he lives in France now or someplace. Leave it with me..”

More days go by. In the end you offer to contact the hosting provider yourself to ask them to reset the passwords. You email them. You get an automated response. Days later you re-send the email. You get another automated response. Eventually, you telephone them, they’re based in another time zone so you have to wait until their offices open. They can’t send you the passwords because you’re not the account holder, so they send the passwords to the email address they have from when the account was set up, which belongs to Bob who now lives in France or someplace. You have to phone them again, explain about Bob going missing and give them the client’s current contact email. They then send the passwords to the client who passes it on to you.

Then when you finally get to upload their files, you find that their hosting doesn’t include a database, the control panel doesn’t work or their security settings won’t allow your scripts to run…   you have to contact the hosting provider and more time wasting begins.

Eventually, maybe, you get the site working and set it live.  The client is happy and you are relieved.

A few months later the client wants to make some changes. They email you the changes they want. You make the changes and go to upload. The FTP login doesn’t work. You look for where you save the password, re-enter it, it doesn’t work. You look for the control panel password,  it doesn’t work. You email the client to ask them if they changed the passwords. They don’t know what you are talking about… and round and round it goes.