We recently discovered that we didn’t really mention much about Website Hosting on our website so we wanted to explain what we offer, why the prices are what they are and try and be as transparent as possible. Yes, we are mainly Website Designers but we do offer lots of extra services too.
Firstly – we offer affordable, fast and secure hosting options that are perfect for all types of websites. Whether you have a small site that does not change very often or a large dynamic ecommerce site with lots of products – we can help and have an option for you.
However, each and every website has different requirements. For example, a small static site that doesn’t really change / update all that often does not need the type of resource that a large ecommerce site needs. We therefore treat each website differently – and we can scale quickly and efficiently if required (for all types of website may I add).
By default, we host all of our small-scale sites on Google Cloud Platform because of its speed, infrastructure and security. We know that there are options out there you can get for £3/4 per month – but these will 99% of the time be on a shared hosting environment and more often than not with hundreds (if not thousands) of other websites. This slows down performance but also opens your website up to more security risks.
What security risks? Well, every website we design that is hosted on the same server is open to any kind of attack should just one of the other sites on that server get infected / hacked. Lets break that down a little bit more…If you are on shared hosting with another 100 websites, and one website gets hacked or infected, then that means the other 99 websites on that server are also massively at risk. We wrote about a massive attack that was sustained not too long ago on a shared server, so when it happens it can become a real problem.
So what do we do? We utilise a couple of hosting options.
First up, our small scale static sites sit on Google’s Cloud Platform infrastructure. This mean we have the security, speed and updates direct from Google.
Secondly, for our ecommerce sites that need to be able to scale up and down quickly – we generally attach these to Digital Ocean servers in their own right so that they get all the performance to themselves.
How much does it cost? Like I wrote at the start of this post, we are transparent about the pricing where we can be. So for any site that sits on Google Cloud Platform we charge £10 per month (billed annually at £120). Granted, we know you can go elsewhere and get hosting for £4/£5 per month and you can absolutely do that, but more often then not you will be sharing that hosting with a lot of other websites on a server – so be careful. Our hosting includes daily backups, excellent security and of course, our support.
If you need to switch hosting for any reason – be that performance with your current host or you need some local support, then get in touch and we will be happy to help.
