Cloud Hosting for Small Business: Shared, VPS or Managed, and How to Choose
The cheapest plan is not always the thrifty one. Here is what each type of hosting really gives you, and the questions that matter more than the price.
Cloud hosting for small business is sold with a tangle of terms, and the marketing often makes the cheapest plan look identical to the dearest. They are not. The differences between shared, virtual private server and managed hosting affect how quickly your site loads, how well it survives busy periods, how safe it is and, importantly, who is responsible when something goes wrong. Here is a plain comparison.
Shared hosting: cheap, and you share the neighbourhood
On a shared plan, many sites live on one server and divide its resources. It is inexpensive and perfectly reasonable for a small brochure site with modest traffic. The drawbacks are that a busy or compromised neighbour can slow you down, you have limited control over the software, and support is often generic. Check the limits on storage, bandwidth and processor use, because some providers throttle sites that exceed them.
Virtual private servers: control, and the responsibility that comes with it
A virtual private server gives you a guaranteed slice of resources and the freedom to install what you need. It suits applications that need particular software or consistent performance. The catch is that somebody must look after it: apply security updates, configure the firewall, monitor disk space and manage backups. Without that attention, a server is a liability. Choose this only if you or your developer will genuinely do the work.
Managed hosting: paying for someone else's attention
Managed plans take on the routine care for you, including patching, monitoring, backups and often performance tuning for a specific platform. They cost more per month than shared hosting, but for a business whose site brings in orders or enquiries, the saving in risk and time can easily justify it. Ask exactly what is included, how quickly they respond and who you speak to in an emergency.
Cloud platforms and scaling
The big cloud platforms let you add capacity when traffic rises and pay for what you use. This is powerful for shops with seasonal peaks or events, but it demands careful design to avoid surprise bills. Set budgets and alerts, and use caching and a content delivery network, which stores copies of your pages and images in many locations so visitors are served from somewhere nearby.
Where your data lives
Customers' personal data needs care. Ask which country the servers are in and which companies can access them. Hosting in a UK or European data centre makes it simpler to explain your arrangements in a privacy notice, and transfers to other countries need appropriate safeguards under UK data protection law. Make sure there is a data processing agreement with the provider.
Questions that matter more than price
How often are backups taken, where are they kept and has a restore ever been tested? What is the provider's record on outages, and how do they communicate during one? Can you upgrade without moving the site? Who owns the account, and can you leave with your data? Are staging copies included for testing changes? What does support cost at 8pm on a Sunday?
A rule of thumb
Costs that hide behind the headline price
Introductory prices are often available for the first year only, with renewals at several times the rate. Extras such as backups, SSL certificates, email accounts, malware scanning and staging environments may be charged separately. Bandwidth overages and storage for media can also catch people out. Read the renewal terms, put the date in the calendar and compare the total annual cost, not the monthly teaser. Ask whether the price includes someone answering the phone when the site goes down.
Plan the move before you need it
Moving a site between hosts is easy when it is planned and miserable when it is done in an emergency. Keep documentation of how the site is configured, including the software versions, scheduled tasks and settings. Test a migration to a staging server once, so that you know how long it takes. Lower the time to live on your domain's records before the switch, and keep the old host running for a few days after.
For a basic site where an hour of downtime costs little, good shared or entry-level managed hosting is sensible. For a shop, a booking system or an application, pay for managed hosting or a properly maintained cloud setup. If you are unsure which category your site sits in, we can review it and suggest a plan that fits both the risk and the budget.