Most hosting is a folder on a server and a support desk that replies in three days. It works fine until the day it does not, and then you find out that backups were not running, nobody was watching, and the person who set it up left two years ago. We host the sites we build, and a fair few we did not. The difference is that when something goes wrong, you already know who to ring and they already know your site.
Hosting looks like a commodity right up to the day you need something from it. Then it turns out the backups were not running, nobody was watching, and the person who set it up left two years ago.
The people who feel this are the ones who have been with a large budget host and found out what happens when something goes wrong.
Nobody is watching. The site can be down for hours before anybody notices, and usually the person who notices is a customer.
Backups nobody has ever tested. A backup that runs is not the same as a backup that restores, and the difference only shows up on the worst day.
A ticket queue instead of a person. You want somebody to ring who already knows your site, not a form and a reply in three days.
Nobody is sure who controls the domain. It is registered somewhere you cannot get into, or with somebody you no longer work with.
You found out from a customer. A warning next to your site in Google, or the host taking it offline, and the first you heard was somebody mentioning it.
Your site on fast UK hosting, with an SSL certificate, backed up every day to somewhere that is not the same server, and watched around the clock so we usually know it is down before you do. A staging copy of your site to try changes on before they go live.
Your hosting keeps the server secure. That is the machine your website sits on, and it gets patched, firewalled and watched around the clock as standard. What that does not cover is WordPress itself. The core software, the plugins, the theme. That is where almost every hacked website we see gets in. Hosting looks after the building. Maintenance looks after the locks. Most businesses want both, which is why they are usually taken together.
Shared hosting is right for most business websites and it is what we recommend to start with. If your site gets busy enough that it needs its own resources, we will tell you rather than letting it get slow and hoping you do not notice. Moving up is straightforward and we handle all of it.
If something is wrong with your hosting, raise it and we sort it. Site down, certificate expired, a backup that needs restoring, email that has stopped routing. None of that is counted against an allowance. Changes to the website itself, like new text, a new page or a swapped image, are a different job. That is the Care Plan.
Whether the site is already with us or sitting somewhere you would rather it was not, it goes the same way.
The whole site and database come across to a staging copy, and that copy gets tested before anything is switched.
DNS is changed outside your working day and your old host stays live until the new one is proven, so nothing is lost in between.
Uptime monitoring, daily backups kept off the server, and security patching and firewall running as standard.
A site down, an expired certificate, a backup that needs restoring, email that has stopped routing: raise it and we sort it.
Managed hosting month to month, plus the one-off pieces: moving a site across, sorting out the domain, setting up email, and cleaning up after a break-in.
Tell us where your site lives now and we will tell you what moving it involves.