What is web hosting?
Your website lives on a computer with a very fast connection to the internet—a web server. We call companies that run web servers a web host.
Each host has it’s strengths and weaknesses, and we help you determine what will meet your needs. Performance, support, maintenance are often counter balanced by cost and support levels.
As development gets more complex, we gravitate towards web hosts who provide stronger service. Managing cost vs. performance is important to get right.
What does web hosting cost?
We can host simple websites for under $10/month. Note that hosting fees can run you hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month, depending on your needs.
What factors might increase hosting requirements?
- Ecommerce sites and websites that perform core business functions or transactions require more security, stronger SSL certificates, and more frequent backups.
- Legal, financial, or healthcare websites require more security and can face penalties for breeches of trust.
- Many sites change daily and the work your team puts into them is critical and valuable. Creating more frequent backup points takes time and disk space, costing you more as well.
- And the more traffic you get and bandwidth and storage you use, the more it costs.
Understanding what kind of hosting and support you need is critical and when we build and manage your website, we help pair the right host and levels of service with your needs.
We’re host neutral and can work with any you choose, but have decades of experience working with these listed here, which makes us more efficient.
We do not see hosting as a profit center, rather it’s a critical need—and our focus is on security and usability. Many web providers make money each month reselling hosting.
Pair
Pair is our go-to hosting solution. Our familiarity with Pair and their excellent support team makes this our most efficient solution.
Pair includes FREE simple SSL certificates, a service most charge for. Good for most simple sites, stronger certs are available.
We can quickly get you hosted on our account as we design and build your site—or, we often set up your own hosting account, so you can work and pay directly with Pair, as you need to.
Enjoy 20% off your first Pair bill! Use code: pairref-qgXezDe3
GoDaddy
We’re fine with GoDaddy hosting. GoDaddy Pro is their service that lets you delegate who you choose to work on your site, meaning you never have to give away your passwords.
To be honest, our experience working with GoDaddy is often frustrating, as simple tasks that should take minutes, may take days to accomplish. Another down side is their support, which sells upgrades instead of quickly solving issues. And, we also see many of their add-on services (and fees) as unnecessary.
That said, we’ve used GoDaddy since 1998, and see them as a reliable host.
