Website Hosting Explained for Startups: Options, Costs and What You Need

Hosting is the part of a website project that founders think about least, right up until the site goes down in the week of a launch. It is also wrapped in jargon that makes a simple decision sound complicated. This guide explains what hosting is, the types available, what each typically costs in the UK, what a startup website actually needs and the questions to ask before you sign up.

What Website Hosting Actually Is

A website is a set of files. Hosting is the computer, or more usually the service, that stores those files and sends them to anyone who types in your address. Without it, the website exists only on your designer's laptop.

It helps to know that four things are involved in getting a website online, and that they are separate even when one company sells all of them:

• The domain name. Your address, rented each year from a registrar. Our guide to choosing a domain name covers how to pick and register one.
• The hosting. The server space and the service around it, which is what this guide is about.
• The website itself. The design and code, which you should own outright and have a copy of.
• Email. Best run on a dedicated email service rather than on your web hosting, so that a hosting problem never takes your inbox down with it.

Keeping them separate matters because you can then change any one of them without losing the others. A startup that owns its domain, holds a copy of its website code and runs email on a proper service can move hosts in an afternoon. One that bought everything as a bundle from a single provider often cannot.

The Types of Hosting and Who Each Suits

Shared hosting

The cheapest option, where your website shares a server with hundreds of others. It suits a simple brochure site with little traffic. The drawbacks are speed, because the server's resources are shared, and security, because the cheapest servers tend to hold a lot of neglected websites.

A VPS or cloud server

A virtual private server gives you a slice of a server to yourself, and a cloud server from one of the big providers is the same idea at larger scale. Both are good value for the raw computing power, but someone has to set the server up, install updates, configure backups and respond when it misbehaves. That someone is either you or a developer you pay.

Managed hosting

Managed hosting, such as managed WordPress hosting, bundles the server with the people who look after it: updates, backups, security monitoring and support. For a site that runs on a content management system it is usually the sensible middle ground.

Modern platforms for hand-coded websites

Websites built with modern frameworks are usually deployed to platforms designed for them: the code lives in a repository, every change is deployed automatically, pages are served from a global content delivery network and there is no server to maintain. This is how we host the sites we build with Next.js.

Static hosting

If a website has no forms, logins or dynamic content, its pages can be served as plain files for very little. Most business websites need at least a working contact form, so static hosting is usually combined with a platform rather than used on its own.

What a Startup Website Actually Needs

Whatever type you choose, a website that represents a business needs the following. If a host or a designer cannot tell you how each one is handled, keep looking.

• Https with a certificate that renews itself. Browsers mark sites without it as not secure.
• Speed, with pages served from a content delivery network so a visitor in Glasgow gets the same experience as one in London.
• Automatic backups you can restore from, tested at least once.
• Reliable uptime, ideally with monitoring that alerts someone before a customer notices.
• Security updates applied promptly, whether to a content management system, its plugins or the framework the site is built on.
• Support from a human when something breaks, with a clear idea of how quickly they respond.
• Room to grow, so a mention in the press or a successful campaign does not take the site down.
• An account in your name, so the hosting cannot disappear along with a supplier.

What Hosting Costs in the UK

Hosting prices are easy to compare on the headline figure and hard to compare on what you actually get. The table above gives the typical monthly ranges; the figure that matters most is the one for a VPS, where the developer time to look after it usually dwarfs the server cost. On top of hosting, budget for the domain name, which is a small annual fee, and business email at a few pounds per user per month. Both are separate purchases whoever hosts the site.

The costs that catch people out are rarely on the price list: introductory prices that double at renewal, paid add-ons for things that should be included such as the security certificate or backups, premium plugins needed to keep a content management system working, and the hours someone spends on updates. When you compare quotes, compare the second year, not the first.

Managed or Do It Yourself?

The honest answer for most startups is that the cheapest hosting is the one that costs the least of your time. A founder who spends two hours a month updating plugins, chasing a support ticket or working out why the contact form stopped sending has spent more than the difference between a budget plan and a managed one.

Managed should mean, in practice: the platform and framework are kept up to date, backups run automatically and are checked, someone is monitoring uptime, security patches are applied without you asking, and small changes to the site can be made quickly by people who understand it. If a plan calls itself managed and cannot say yes to each of those, it is ordinary hosting with a nicer name.

Doing it yourself makes sense if you already have a developer in the team or the website is part of your product. It is a legitimate choice, as long as you hold a copy of the code and know what the monthly jobs are.

How We Host the Websites We Build

We design and build startup websites in-house and offer managed cloud hosting from £20 per month. The site is hosted in the cloud and completely managed by us: kept fast and secure, backed up and updated, with quick changes whenever you need them, because the people hosting the site are the people who built it.

Hosting with us is optional. Every website we build is delivered with its complete code, so if you would rather host it yourself, or your team already has a platform, we hand everything over. Either way you own the domain, the code and the content. The website itself is priced separately, with startup website design from £2,400. If you are weighing up a builder against a custom site, our comparison of custom websites and website builders covers where hosting fits into that decision.

Questions to Ask Before You Sign Up

1. Whose name is the hosting account in, and can I take it over if we part company?
2. What exactly is included: certificate, backups, updates, monitoring and support hours?
3. How are backups taken, how far back do they go and how do I restore one?
4. How quickly are changes to the website made, and what does a small change cost?
5. What is the price at renewal, not just in the first year?
6. If I leave, what do I receive and how long does it take?

The answers tell you as much about the supplier as about the plan. Our guide to questions to ask a website designer covers the wider conversation.

Switching Hosts Later

Moving a website is routine when it was built well and the owner has the code: the new host is set up, the site is tested on a temporary address, the domain is pointed at it and the old account is closed. Done carefully, visitors never notice. It becomes painful when the site lives inside a builder, the code was never handed over, or the domain is registered to someone who has stopped answering emails. Those are the situations to avoid at the start, and the reason this guide keeps returning to ownership.

If you are planning a new website, our startup website checklist covers everything else that needs to be in place before launch, our startup web design page explains how we work, and you can contact us to talk through what your website needs.