If you are a business owner, web developer or marketer, there’s no doubt that at some point you will probably need to host or migrate a website. This guide will help you choose the best hosting option to get your website online in the quickest, easiest and most secure way possible.
When searching for the right hosting plan for you, you’ll first need to identify the specific needs of the website, then use this to find a fitting hosting plan at the right price.
What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting refers to the service of providing storage space and resources for websites and making them accessible on the Internet. When you create a website, you need a place to store its files, such as HTML pages, images, videos, and other content. Web hosting companies offer server space where you can upload and store these files.
It’s important to choose a reliable web hosting provider that offers good uptime, responsive customer support, adequate storage and bandwidth, security features, and scalability options to accommodate your website’s growth.
What is Shared Web Hosting?
Shared Web Hosting is the cheapest hosting option on the market, and in most cases includes all of the necessities; email clients, web builders, and CMS hosting (WordPress, Joomla, etc). With shared hosting, multiple sites are hosted on the same server, with users sharing the system resources (RAM, bandwidth, hard drive space etc.). Users are set to a cap/limit of how many system resources they can use, to stop one user from devouring everything.
Many people like to compare Shared Web Hosting to a shared house – everyone lives under one roof, but if someone breaks the fridge or throws a house party it affects everyone. In the same way, if someone using Shared Web Hosting sends a lot of spam or is blacklisted, they’ll take everyone else down with them.
Shared hosting is best for:
Smaller Businesses
Shared hosting offers an affordable solution that provides adequate resources and support for websites with lower traffic and resource demands.
Blogs
Similarly to the above, shared hosting offers a cost-effective solution that provides the necessary resources and infrastructure to support the relatively lower traffic and resource needs of blog websites.
Personal Websites
Shared hosting is best for personal websites because it offers an economical option that provides sufficient resources and support for individual users’ personal online presence and minimal traffic requirements.
What is VPS Hosting?
VPS (Virtual Private Servers) hosting is like living alone, requiring you alone to maintain the property – unlike Shared Web Hosting. If your site deals with sensitive information (e.g. credit card/billing information) VPS hosting is the way to go, as your resources aren’t shared with others.
VPS hosting is best suited for individuals and businesses that require more control, flexibility, and resources than what shared hosting can provide, but do not need the full power and cost of a dedicated server. VPS hosting is a middle-ground option that offers a balance between affordability and enhanced performance.
VPS hosting is best for:
Growing Websites
You get improved performance, and greater personalisation over the server than shared servers and gives you greater resource limits. It also has improved security so its good for a business that is growing.
eCommerce Websites
VPS hosting provides enhanced security features, such as isolated environments and customisable firewall settings, which are crucial for protecting sensitive customer data and ensuring secure online transactions. Moreover, the scalability of VPS hosting allows eCommerce businesses to easily accommodate growth and handle peak shopping seasons without compromising performance or user experience.
Web Developers and Agencies
VPS hosting provides greater control and flexibility compared to shared hosting, allowing developers to customise server configurations and install necessary software or frameworks tailored to their specific needs. Additionally, VPS hosting allows for easy scalability, enabling developers and agencies to efficiently manage multiple client websites and allocate resources as required, ensuring optimal performance and meeting the unique requirements of each project.
Resource-Intensive Websites
VPS hosting is ideal for resource-intensive websites due to its provision of dedicated resources, including CPU, RAM, and storage. This ensures consistent performance, stability, and the ability to handle high levels of traffic and resource demands.
What is Dedicated Hosting?
Dedicated hosting is when you have an entire server to yourself, meaning it’s not shared with anyone. This type of hosting is much more flexible than Shared and VPS hosting – with dedicated hosting, you have full control of the whole server, such as the operating system and hardware. Dedicated hosting is great if your business is constantly growing as you won’t need to worry about a lack of resources, and you can lock down your server to fight against hackers and attacks.
The downside to dedicated hosting is that it will set your business back by a lot of money as it’s the most expensive option, but you will get the most for your money. Also, if you encounter any technical issues like setting up the server or the server crashing, the process can be more difficult to resolve.
Dedicated hosting is best for:
Very High Traffic Websites
Dedicated hosting is best for websites that receive large amounts of traffic as the server can be customised and configured to handle higher volumes of traffic.
Larger eCommerce Websites
Large-scale eCommerce websites often require significantly more resources, storage and bandwidth than your average small brochure website. With dedicated hosting, you can choose an option that can facilitate your requirements.
Gaming Servers
Gaming servers hold very high amounts of data and code, and they need a large space to be able to operate smoothly. Having a dedicated server allows them to not have to share space with other content so it has more room to operate effectively and securely.
Things to take into consideration when choosing dedicated hosting:
RAM – RAM is an abbreviation for Random Access Memory, this is used to process the information delivered to the CPU (the more ram the faster information is processed).
Control Panel – The enhanced cPanel is basically the backend of the server where you can control everything from databases, files, emails, accounts and other features.
Storage & Bandwidth – More storage on your dedicated server means users can store more data on the hardware. With enough bandwidth, larger amounts of data can be transferred from the server at a smoother rate – unlike a shared hosting package this won’t be capped at a certain limit, which will be handy for bigger websites with more traffic.
The Best UK Website Hosting Providers
1. Loop Digital
Loop Digital is a premium and bespoke website hosting and management service. Hosting and website maintenance services are handled by their top team of skilled and experienced individuals. They know that your website is unlikely to stay still, they anticipate growth and evolution in line with your business advancements and continue to support you with this. There’re a variety of different hosting options available to suit the unique requirements of your business.
Type of hosting
Per month
Non-managed Hosting
£50 + VAT
Maintenance-Only
£50 + VAT
Fully-Managed Hosting
£80 + VAT
Dedicated Hosting
POA
(Prices accurate as of June 2023)
2. Web Hosting UK
Web Hosting UK is a very affordable web hosting service. They provide 24/7 live support plus access to their Web, WordPress, Blog, and Email hosting forum with over 10,000 questions answered. WHUK are incredibly helpful, especially if you are a novice when it comes to setting up web hosting, and they also provide a 30-day money-back guarantee – so if you aren’t 100% satisfied you can always get your money back.
Type of hosting
Per month
Premium Hosting (shared hosting)
£2.99 excl.VAT
Managed VPS Server
£15.54 excl.VAT
Enterprise Cloud Server
£23.41 excl.VAT
Dedicated Server
£83.45 excl.VAT
(Prices accurate as of June 2023)
3. Hostinger
Hostinger claims to be the UK’s cheapest web hosting at the speed of light. When you purchase hosting with them you get a free domain, unlimited disk and bandwidth and 24/7 customer service. Hostinger is amazing for the price, the customer support goes above and beyond and they really do provide 24/7 support. They also provide a 30-day money-back guarantee and in the past six months of using them, they have consistently kept their backend up-to-date with the latest cPanel updates, hardware updates and software updates.
Type of hosting
Per month
Single Web Hosting
£1.49
Premium Web Hosting
£2.59
Business Web Hosting
£3.99
(Prices accurate as of June 2023)
4. Krystal
Krystal is on the smaller side compared to Hostinger and Web Hosting UK but they back this up by offering a 60-day money-back guarantee – plenty of time to test server uptime and customer support! Krystal is unique in that they also provide a free SSL certificate with all of their packages.
Type of hosting
Per month
Cloud hosting
£8
Cloud VPS
£10
Business Hosting
£56
(Prices accurate as of June 2023)
Web Hosting at Loop Digital
Here at Loop Digital, we offer premium hosting and maintenance services. We will host and update your site as well as keep your website ultra-secure. We can offer daily backups, quick restoration as well as health and vulnerability checks. If you want to find out more get in touch with us today or book a meeting with our friendly team to discuss your requirements.
Karolina’s speciality and also her biggest passion is web development. She has a BSc in Economics with Management (Aberystwyth University). She also has a Master degree in Computing (Web Technologies and Internet Security) and Karolina passed this one with distinction (it was at University of Northampton). Her business background consists of working as a web dev firstly as a freelancer, then she joined Loop in 2019. Karolina can help with building sites from scratch, adding new functionality to the existing sites, and she love investigating and fixing errors.
Fun facts: secretly she enjoys watching Paw Patrol, family says she often asks obvious questions!
Looking for your next opportunity?
Digital marketing careers
We’re always on the lookout for talented individuals to join our ever growing team. If you think you’d be a great match for Loop Digital, we’d love to hear from you.
