A dashboard for managing multiple client websites

A freelancer with three clients can keep everything in their head. At ten, the site that breaks is the one you were not looking at.

This page describes how to run many client websites from one dashboard, what you see each morning and what changes when you do.

What goes wrong when you look after many client websites?

The problems are predictable, and each one is a message from a client.

• The site is down and you hear about it from the client. It looks unprofessional and it was avoidable.
• A certificate expires. Visitors get a full-page browser warning and your client gets a worried phone call.
• A domain renewal goes to an old inbox. The site and the email disappear together.
• A deploy failed and nobody noticed. The old version keeps running, so nothing looks broken until someone wonders why a change is missing.
• Traffic dropped. Search Console shows one property at a time, so a slow slide on one client's site goes unseen for weeks.
• You do not know which client pays for itself. Hosting, domains and tools are spread across cards and spreadsheets.

None of these needs a clever tool. They need the signals in one place that you actually look at.

How do I manage multiple client websites in one place?

Give every client website a project, and put everything that belongs to it on that project.

1. Create a project per client site. Name it after the client or the site, and add the live address so uptime can be checked.
2. Connect your accounts once. Link GitHub, Netlify or Vercel, and Google Search Console with read access. A fine-grained GitHub token only sees the repositories you choose.
3. Map each resource to its project. The repository, the hosting site and the Search Console property go to the client that owns them.
4. Add what cannot be read automatically. API tokens, subscriptions and contracts go into the renewal calendar by hand, and costs and revenue go against the project.
5. Open one list. Projects are sorted by what needs attention, so a down site, a failed deploy or an expiring certificate is at the top.

What do I see each morning?

A single list, one row per client project, with:

• Health: healthy, degraded, down, or Not monitored when no check exists, never green by default.
• Latest deployment: whether the last attempt succeeded, and separately which release is live.
• Renewals: the next certificate or domain date for each site, and how many days are left.
• Search: clicks, impressions and position, with the change against the previous period.
• Cost and margin: what each client's site costs you and earns, when you have recorded revenue.

Anything that needs action sits at the top. If the list has nothing urgent, you are done in a minute.

What does it change for your clients?

• You tell them first. A short message that you saw the problem and are on it is a very different conversation from one that starts with their question.
• You can prove it. Uptime, renewal dates and search figures for their site are a record you can share in a monthly note.
• Renewals stop being a surprise. You can tell them whose card is on file and when it renews.

Who should not use this?

If you only look after one or two sites and already check them daily, a separate tool adds little. This is for the point where checking by hand has already started to slip.

Where Datumboard fits

Datumboard is being built for exactly this: one dashboard for every client site and side project, with uptime, SSL and domain renewals, deploys, Search Console, Lighthouse and costs. It is in early access, and you can join the list below.