One thing I rarely do is take on expenses for clients. That means if they need a plugin to run their site, they need to be responsible for purchasing the plugin and providing it to me. I don’t purchase it for them, unless they want to provide me with a credit card.

Here’s Why

1. Then they have their own account with whatever service. It’s not under my account, they get the support directly from the service provider.
2. No questions of ownership arise. When they have their own account they can take the plugin to another developer and provide them the account login without needing to talk to me. Most systems have no way for me to purchase it and provide someone else access as a sub-account.
3. I’m not a bank for my clients. Getting me to purchase the plugin defers the costs of having cash tied up to me. I’m not a loan company and some of the items we need on a project run in to the many hundreds of dollars. I have no interest in loaning them money.

Point 3 is probably the biggest one for me. Even if you’re on a crappy domain registrar and need to upgrade to have access to DNS records I don’t want to loan you the money get the upgrade. Sure it’s your account and you can take it anywhere you want (negating point 1 and 2) but I’m still not your bank and I have no interest in becoming one.