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Hosting and Growth Scaling

Your hosting is the foundation your website sits on. As your business grows, your hosting needs to grow with it.

What Web Hosting Actually Is

Web hosting is a service that stores your website's files on a server and makes them accessible to visitors on the internet. When someone types your domain name into their browser, the hosting server delivers your web pages to their screen.

The quality of your hosting directly affects how fast your site loads, how reliable it is, and how well it handles traffic. Cheap hosting saves money upfront but often costs more in the long run through slow load times, downtime, and limited support.

Types of Web Hosting

  • Shared hosting: Your site shares server resources with hundreds of other websites. The most affordable option but also the least performant. Fine for small sites with low traffic.
  • VPS hosting: Virtual private server hosting gives you a dedicated portion of a server. Better performance and more control than shared hosting at a moderate price.
  • Dedicated hosting: An entire physical server for your website only. Maximum performance and control, but higher cost. Typically needed only for high-traffic sites or applications with specific requirements.
  • Cloud hosting: Your site runs on a network of servers that can scale resources up or down based on demand. Flexible and reliable, with pricing that can vary based on usage.
  • Managed hosting: The hosting provider handles server management, updates, security, and optimization. Higher cost but eliminates the need for technical server management.

When You Need to Scale

Signs that your current hosting is no longer adequate:

  • Your site loads slowly even after optimization efforts
  • You experience downtime during traffic spikes
  • Your hosting provider sends resource usage warnings
  • Database queries are slow despite optimization
  • You need features your current plan does not support
  • Your SSL certificate or security features are limited

What to Look for in a Hosting Provider

  • Uptime guarantee: Look for 99.9% or higher uptime commitments
  • Speed and performance: Server response times and available resources
  • Support quality: Responsive, knowledgeable support available when you need it
  • Backup policy: Automatic backups with easy restore options
  • Security features: SSL certificates, firewalls, malware scanning, and DDoS protection
  • Scalability: The ability to upgrade resources without migrating to a new provider
  • Server location: Servers located near your primary audience for faster load times

Common Hosting Mistakes

  • Choosing the cheapest option without considering performance implications
  • Not having a backup strategy independent of your hosting provider
  • Ignoring server location -- a server in a different country means slower load times for your audience
  • Overlooking the fine print on "unlimited" plans that have hidden throttling
  • Not planning for growth and having to do an emergency migration under pressure
  • Registering your domain through your hosting provider, making it harder to switch later

Related Guides

Page Speed Optimization

Hosting is a key factor in page speed

 Website Maintenance & Updates

Keeping your hosting environment healthy

Internet Crafters does hosting setup

This is a la carte work, billed hourly rather than bundled into a package. You get an estimate and a confirmed scope before anything starts, so the number you approve is the number you pay.

Custom Development

$90/hr

1-hour minimum. We estimate the hours and confirm scope before starting.

What that covers here

  • Setting hosting up and pointing your domain at it, as part of a build
  • Moving a site off hosting that has become slow, expensive, or unreachable
  • Sorting out DNS when email and website live in different places, which is where most of the confusion happens
  • Diagnosing whether a slow site is actually a hosting problem, because it usually is not

Hosting a static site is cheap. If you are paying a lot for a small business website, it is worth an hour to find out what you are paying for.

What we would suggest instead, once

Buy hosting from our store or from anywhere else you like. Either way the account is in your name, you can leave whenever you want without asking us for anything, and we will set it up and look after it. You will never be locked in by us holding the keys.

How to get on the hourly rate

Ask. Hourly work is open to anyone, with no setup fee and nothing you have to buy first. We confirm the scope and the hours with you before any of them get spent.

Bigger pieces of work get scoped and quoted as a project rather than billed by the hour. Tell us what you need.

Get an estimate for this See every rate we charge

What you own

The domain is registered in your name and the hosting account is yours. Any developer can pick the site up. That is the arrangement whether or not you keep working with us.

What a website actually costs Read the terms