Your website
Web hosting, and what you are actually paying for
Hosting is where your website physically lives. Most small businesses are on the cheapest tier available, which is fine until it is not, and the failure mode is usually speed rather than downtime.
What it is
The three kinds
- Shared. Your site sits on a machine with hundreds of others. Cheapest, and your speed depends partly on what your neighbors are doing.
- VPS. A reserved portion of a machine. More predictable, more control, more responsibility.
- Managed. Somebody else handles the server, the updates and the monitoring. Costs more and removes an entire category of problem.
How it works
What cheap hosting actually costs
- Slower page loads, which costs you visitors before it costs you rankings.
- Support that answers in days rather than minutes when something breaks.
- Backups with short retention, or none.
- Migration fees when you eventually leave, which are rarely mentioned when you arrive.
What to check
Questions before you sign anything
- What is the backup retention, and can I restore without opening a ticket?
- Is there a staging environment where changes can be tested?
- What does support actually cover, and what is the response time in writing?
- What does it cost to leave, and do I get the files?
Worth knowing
When moving is worth it
- Your site is measurably slow and the images are already optimized.
- You cannot get a straight answer about backups.
- Support takes days.
- You are paying for managed and nobody has ever proactively told you anything.
The short version
You are not buying disk space. You are buying how quickly somebody answers when the site is down.
Start here
Wondering whether your hosting is the problem?
Send us the address and we will tell you what is actually slowing it down. Frequently it is not the hosting, and we will say so rather than sell you a migration.
800.274.6775Free consultation · Family owned · Never outsourced
- You talk to the people who do the work, not an account handler.
- Fixed scope and fixed price before anything starts.
- You own every file, every login, and every asset. Always.
- Straight answers, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Tell us about your business
A few details and we will follow up within one business day.