What is a web hosting service?

A web hosting service is a company that keeps your website on a server, a computer permanently connected to the internet, so that anyone typing your address can see it. You rent space and capacity on that server rather than running one yourself. Web hosting services usually also provide the security certificate that puts the padlock in the browser, backups, and often email. Without hosting, a website is a set of files with nowhere to be seen.

It helps to separate three things people often run together. The domain is your address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk, registered for a yearly fee. The website is the design, pages and content. The hosting is where that website physically lives. The domain points at the hosting through DNS records, which act like a directory telling browsers which server to ask. You can buy all three from one company or from three, and knowing which you have saves a lot of confusion when something stops working.

What does a web hosting service actually do? At its simplest, it keeps the server running, connected and powered, and serves your pages quickly to whoever asks for them. Most services add an SSL certificate so the site loads securely, a control panel for managing files and settings, a database for sites built on platforms such as WordPress, and some form of backup. Many also host email for your domain, so that addresses ending in your business name work.

There are four main types. Shared hosting places many websites on one server and is the cheapest option, often a few pounds a month, at the cost of sharing resources with everybody else on the machine. Virtual private server hosting gives you a guaranteed slice of a server with more control and more responsibility. Dedicated hosting is a whole physical server for one customer, which most small businesses do not need. Managed hosting can sit on any of these, with the difference that the provider maintains it for you rather than handing over a login.

What should a business look for? Speed matters because slow sites lose visitors and rank less well, so ask where the servers are; UK servers suit UK customers. Backups matter, specifically whether they are kept away from the server and whether anyone tests restoring them. Support matters: when the site goes down at four on a Friday, is there a person to ring who can fix it? And ownership matters: make sure the domain is registered in your business’s name, and that you can move the site elsewhere without obstruction.

What does it cost? As market guidance, UK website hosting bought on its own typically runs from about £5 to £40 a month, depending on how much capacity the site needs and how much looking after is included. Very cheap plans are usually shared hosting with self-service support. Plans that include updates, tested backups and small content changes are usually sold as care or maintenance plans and cost more, because they include somebody’s time.

The commonest problems with hosting are not technical. They are ownership problems. Nobody remembers who holds the hosting account, the domain renewal goes to an email address that no longer exists, the certificate lapses, and the site starts warning visitors away. Writing down where each piece lives, and who receives the renewal reminders, prevents most of them.

Two quick checks are worth doing on your current site. First, find out where it is hosted and who holds the login; if the answer is a former employee or a web designer you no longer speak to, sort that out before you need it. Second, ask when the last backup was restored to prove it works. If nobody knows, assume it has not been.

Our own websites include the first year of hosting, on managed UK servers with daily backups, monitoring, SSL and DNS handled by the team that built the site. We also host sites we did not build, starting with an audit of what is there. Business email for your domain sits under the same hosting, so the website and the mailboxes are looked after in one place.

• Hosting, Managed UK hosting for websites, email and applications, with backups, SSL, domains and DNS handled.
• Business Email, Mailboxes on your own domain, set up properly, with the anti-spoofing records most small businesses are missing.