Your hosting directly affects your website’s speed, security, and reliability. Bad hosting makes fast websites slow and secure websites vulnerable. Here’s what you need to know.
Types of Hosting
Shared Hosting (£3–£15/month)
Your site shares a server with hundreds of other websites. Cheapest option but also the slowest and least secure. Fine for personal blogs or very low-traffic sites. Not recommended for business websites.
Managed WordPress Hosting (£15–£50/month)
Servers optimised specifically for WordPress. Includes automatic updates, daily backups, staging environments, and expert WordPress support. This is what we recommend for most business websites.
Top providers: Kinsta, WP Engine, Cloudways, SiteGround (GoGeek plan).
VPS Hosting (£20–£100/month)
A virtual private server gives you dedicated resources on a shared physical server. More control and better performance than shared hosting, but requires technical knowledge to manage.
Cloud Hosting (£30–£200+/month)
Scalable infrastructure that grows with your traffic. AWS, Google Cloud, and DigitalOcean are the main players. Best for high-traffic sites or applications that need to handle unpredictable traffic spikes.
What Matters Most
- Server location: Choose a UK-based server (or at minimum European) for the best performance for UK visitors.
- Uptime guarantee: Look for 99.9% minimum. Anything less means your site could be down for hours every month.
- Daily backups: Non-negotiable. Your host should back up your site automatically every day.
- SSL included: Free SSL certificates should be standard.
- Support quality: You need fast, knowledgeable support when something goes wrong at 2am on a Saturday.
Our Recommendation
For most UK business websites, managed WordPress hosting at £20–£40/month is the sweet spot. You get excellent performance, automatic security, and expert support without the complexity of managing a server yourself.
We help all our clients choose and set up the right hosting as part of the build process. Talk to us about your hosting needs.