Web hosting, explained
Between 2004 and 2010 this domain was a hosting company — shared servers, a support desk, an SLA page and everything. We've seen the industry from the inside, and this section is written the way we wish someone had explained it to our customers.
"Hosting" is one word for six quite different products. Picking the wrong one is the most common expensive mistake small sites make — usually paying VPS prices for a brochure site, or fighting shared-hosting limits with a real app. Here's the map.
The types, in one table
| Type | You get | Who runs the server | Fair price (2026) | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | a slot on a managed web server + control panel + email | they do | £3–10/mo renewed | WordPress & brochure sites, people who never want a terminal |
| VPS | your own virtual Linux machine, root access | you do | £4–15/mo | apps, containers, learners, self-hosters |
| Managed WordPress / app | a tuned platform for one thing, done for you | they do | £15–40/mo | WordPress sites that make money |
| Dedicated | a whole physical server | you do (usually) | £40–200+/mo | heavy workloads, big databases, compliance |
| Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) | infinite Lego, pay-per-use | you do, and it's a career | £0 to ∞ | teams building on the ecosystem — not "a Linux box" |
| Static / Jamstack | global CDN for HTML/JS sites | they do | free–£15/mo | blogs, docs, landing pages, this site |
Deep dives
- Shared hosting vs VPS: which do you actually need? — the fork most people face, resolved with one rule.
- How to choose a VPS without overpaying — the specs that matter and the ones that are marketing.
- Self-hosting for beginners — the "run it yourself" alternative to renting.
Five questions to ask any host before paying
- What's the renewal price? First-term teasers at 70% off are the industry's oldest trick; the renewal price is the real price.
- What exactly is "unlimited"? Read the fair-use / resource limits page. If it doesn't exist, that's your answer.
- Are backups included, how often, and can I restore them? Daily, retained a week or more, self-service restore — or budget for your own (here's how).
- Where's the data centre? Latency to your visitors, and for UK/EU businesses, where personal data lives.
- How do I leave? Full backup download, DNS you control, no proprietary lock-in. Good hosts make leaving easy; it's a signal.
A word on affiliate links
As this section grows to include named providers, some links will be affiliate links, which help pay for the site. That will never decide what we recommend — the whole point of having run a hosting company is knowing which corners get cut, and we'd rather keep that credibility than a commission.