Host recommendations and client hosting standalone

I’m looking to migrate my WordPress sites off a dedicated server to something easer to manage.

Firstly, what is the general opinion of Linode, obviously I’m comfortable in the terminal so I need something with full SSH access. Would the recommendations here of Bluhost or Digital ocean have the level of access. My biggest gripe with a stand alone server is price $30 (I supplied the machine!) and backups. It seems like Linode can start at $5pm with backups for $2pm.

Secondly, what is the best practices to bill clients for hosting after a site build? I’d like to have the client pay for the hosting directly so if we part ways there is not the mess I have incountered in the past 20 years with asking them for the hosting fee each month and not able to automate this (PayPal charges additional fees to run recurring credit card transactions per month under a certain amount of users) Love this WP stuff and I don’t miss Drupal at all ??

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]