Updated October 9, 2026.
Website hosting is the service that makes your site available online. The right plan depends on what the site does, who maintains it, and what would happen if a key part stopped working.
Start with those questions before comparing storage allowances or introductory prices. A small service website, an online store and a customer portal can need quite different setups.
Hosting, domains and email are separate jobs
Your domain is the name people use to reach you. DNS records connect that name to services. Web hosting delivers pages and runs any server-side features; email hosting handles mailboxes. A supplier may bundle them, but moving one does not require moving all of them.
A web server responds to requests from a browser. It can deliver existing files or generate a response using application code and data. MDN’s web server explanation describes both approaches.
Keep the domain account under your business’s control, with recovery access and a named renewal owner. Our domain and DNS guide explains the distinctions in more detail.
Match hosting to the whole website
List the pieces of your site before choosing a plan:
| Website need | What to confirm |
|---|---|
| Public service pages, articles and projects | How pages are published, delivered and restored |
| Contact forms and booking | Where submissions go, which service processes them and who investigates failures |
| Online sales | Support for checkout, inventory, orders, payment integrations and recovery |
| Customer accounts | Application runtime, data storage, authentication and access controls |
| Staff editing | Editor access, publishing permissions, previews and training |
Prebuilt pages can use static hosting, while features that run on a server need an appropriate runtime. These approaches can coexist. For example, Astro supports prebuilt pages and on-demand rendering; the latter requires a compatible adapter and hosting environment. Choosing Astro alone does not determine every hosting requirement.
Include outside services in the plan. A website can load normally while its booking provider or form delivery has failed.
Understand the labels in a hosting quote
Hosting terms describe different things and can overlap. Use them to start questions, not to rank providers automatically.
- Shared hosting: multiple sites use a server’s resources. Ask about resource limits and support for your software.
- Virtual private server (VPS): a virtual server environment with allocated resources. Confirm which resources are shared and who manages the operating system.
- Dedicated server: a physical server assigned to your use. Check whether your requirements justify the operating cost and maintenance responsibility.
- Cloud or application hosting: infrastructure or application services delivered through a provider’s platform. Ask how scaling works, what has limits and which usage generates charges.
- Managed hosting: a service agreement about who does the work. Ask exactly what is managed; the label alone does not promise application fixes, content updates or around-the-clock support.
A hosted website builder may include hosting in its subscription. Compare the complete editing, support and export arrangement with a separately hosted build.
Compare responsibilities before price
Ask each provider to put the following in writing:
- Maintenance: who updates the site software, dependencies and integrations?
- Backups: what is included, how long copies are retained, and how is restoration tested? Include databases and uploaded files where applicable.
- Support: what are the hours, response targets and limits? Monitoring is not the same as someone resolving every incident immediately.
- Ownership and access: can you obtain the source, content, data and account access needed to leave?
- Publishing: are content edits included, and are new pages or functionality separate work?
- Limits and billing: what are renewal rates, usage allowances, overages and cancellation terms?
Estimate capacity from the actual build, media library and expected usage. Avoid a universal storage minimum for every small business. Ask what happens when a limit is reached: a charge, a slowdown or a suspended service.
An uptime promise also needs a definition. As an arithmetic illustration, 99.9% availability over a 30-day month allows 43.2 minutes unavailable: 30 × 24 × 60 × 0.001. A contract may measure availability differently, exclude some events or offer credits instead of compensating business losses. Read those terms before relying on the headline percentage.
Plan a hosting move as a small project
Moving a website involves more than copying pages. Use this sequence with whoever owns the technical work:
- Inventory services. Record domain and DNS access, email records, forms, analytics, scheduled jobs, files, databases and outside integrations.
- Back up and test recovery. Keep a recoverable copy of the current site and agree on a rollback plan.
- Prepare the destination. Confirm software compatibility, certificates, configuration and access controls before switching visitors over.
- Test realistic tasks. Open important URLs, submit a test inquiry, check delivery, and test login, checkout and refunds where relevant using appropriate test modes.
- Plan changing data. For orders, accounts or submissions, agree on a final synchronization or write pause. A restored backup can lose records created afterward unless they are reconciled.
- Change only the required DNS settings. Preserve mail and verification records. Timing depends on cached records and the providers involved; do not promise a fixed propagation window.
- Monitor before closing the old account. Check traffic, errors and business tasks on the new service. Confirm that mail, files or other services do not still depend on the old account.
Google’s hosting-move guidance covers testing, DNS changes, removing temporary crawl blocks and monitoring old and new servers. It applies to moves that keep URLs unchanged. If addresses change too, plan URL mapping and redirects separately.
Diagnose a problem before buying more hosting
If pages feel slow, measure representative pages and identify whether the delay comes from the server, images, scripts or outside services. A more expensive plan will not necessarily fix a large image or a slow booking widget. Start with our website optimization guide.
If inquiries disappear, test the form and delivery path. If only email is failing, investigate the mail service and its settings before moving the website. Our business email guide covers that separate decision.
Our hosting and update scope
Our Astro hosting and updates plan is $300 per month and includes updates to existing pages, SSL, daily backups, monitoring and technical maintenance. New pages are quoted separately. We generally host sites we build; existing Astro sites need a review of their setup and migration requirements first.
For a new build, agree on the website scope and the ongoing hosting responsibilities together. That gives you a clearer budget and a specific person to contact when something needs attention.