What hosting solution for your business website?

Find the right hosting solution for your business could be an expensive solution if you don’t know what to choose. Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting solution you can get. It could be a viable solutions for bloggers or if you have a basic static (HTML only) website that doesn’t need lots of ressources. However as a business owner, if your website processes data, the limitations of a shared hosting will appear to you very quickly. This is even worse when you use a content managed website (such as WordPress, Drupal), or an e-commerce website that needs on top to process payments.

Shared hosting:

Your website is “shared” with other users / websites. Very popular solution but unfortunately not the best for professionals. It’s not uncommon on cheap hosting solutions to have more than 30.000 websites on one server. You can then guess the issues that can arise when visitors try to buy a product, and the website is either slow or crashes. Visitors patience is limited (even more on the web) and after only a few seconds you can lose a client. It can be very difficult to fix certain issues, and support can be very unreliable. This is by experience, after many years dealing with shared hosting for more than 400 customers.

Self Hosting

Hosting yourself your website on your computer. This is not reliable for businesses, unless you have the funds to pay a team of dedicated server administrators. It’s also a dangerous practice if you don’t know what you are doing. While you could make some savings and have full control, there are many downsides that you must consider. Your server (or computer) has to be 24/7 online, and rely on your internet connection speed for instance.

Cloud hosting

Cheap and scalable (you pay only for what you use). However potential security issues, and requires you to be IT proficient. Only suitable for businesses who know what they are doing and have someone dedicated to the task.

VPS Hosting

The next step up of web hosting, and the solution we would advise to most of our clients, is host your website on a VPS Server. You share your website with a few other companies, but they do not affect your website’s performance. We fully manage your hosting on the VPS Server. Pricing will vary depending of the type of website and the ressources needed. It will vary between £15 and £40 a month depending on the options you need.

Dedicated Hosting

Similar to a VPS hosting, but you have access to every aspect of the server. Your website and emails are stored on this server with no other website. If you own several companies you can also host your websites and emails on this same server. This is the most expensive option, and are used by the clients that manages sensitive data (see SSL Certificate) are serious about web hosting, deliverability, speed, and primarily security. Pricing can vary from £60 to several thousands per month

For most of our clients we would advise to go for a VPS Server. This is a more professional solution, perfectly suitable for business use: reliability, and increased security is what you need. If you need help to choose the right solution, for your web hosting needs, please contact us at: info@creativepixel.agency