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Care & Infrastructure

Hosting that isn't the reason your site is slow

Managed hosting for sites we look after. Hosting is the least interesting thing on this list and the one most likely to be quietly ruining your site's speed, because the cheap end of the market sells a slice of a heavily-shared machine and describes it in the same words as a dedicated one.

How it runs

What actually happens, in order

  1. Measure what you have now

    Day 1

    Time to first byte from Florida, measured several times across a day rather than once. TTFB is the part of load time hosting actually controls, and it is where an oversold shared plan shows up — a good server answers in well under half a second, and shared plans under load routinely take several times that.

  2. Move it, on a staging copy first

    Week 1

    The site is copied, tested on the new server, and only then does DNS change. Nothing is moved by uploading files to a live server and hoping, which is how migrations produce an afternoon of downtime.

  3. Configure the parts that matter

    Week 1

    Server-level caching, HTTP/2 or better, compression, a current PHP version, and a CDN in front. Most of the speed difference between hosts is configuration rather than hardware, which is why 'we moved to a faster host' sometimes changes nothing.

  4. Backups you have actually restored from

    Week 1, then quarterly

    Daily off-server backups, and a restore tested on staging so we know they work. A backup that has never been restored is a belief, not a backup — and the moment you find out is the worst possible moment.

  5. Monitoring

    Ongoing

    Uptime checked from outside, with an alert that goes to us. You should not be the one who discovers the site is down, and neither should a customer.

Scope

What is included — and what is not

Both lists, because the second one is where projects go wrong and almost nobody publishes it.

  • Migration with no planned downtime, tested on staging before DNS changes
  • Server-level caching, current PHP, compression and CDN configured
  • SSL certificate, issued and renewed automatically
  • Daily off-server backups with a tested restore
  • Uptime monitoring that alerts us, not you
  • Before-and-after TTFB measured from Florida, given to you in writing
  • A staging site, so changes are never tested on the live one
  • Email hosting — it belongs with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, not on a web server, and we will help you move it if it is currently mixed in
  • Domain registration, which stays in your own account by design
  • Sites we do not maintain, since hosting without maintenance means being blamed for problems we are not allowed to fix

Straight answers

Questions people actually ask

Is my cheap shared hosting actually the problem?
Sometimes, and it is measurable rather than a matter of opinion. Check time to first byte. If it is consistently high while the page itself is light, the server is the bottleneck. If TTFB is fine and the page is still slow, the problem is on the page and moving host will change nothing — which is worth knowing before you pay to move.
Do you charge more than GoDaddy or Bluehost?
Yes, considerably, and the comparison is not like for like. Their price buys a slice of a shared machine. This buys a configured server, tested backups, monitoring and someone who fixes it. If all you need is somewhere to park a brochure site nobody depends on, their price is the right one and we will say so.
What happens if the site goes down?
Monitoring notices from outside the network and alerts us. We investigate, and you get told what happened and what was done — including when the cause was ours.
Can I keep my domain where it is?
Yes, and we would rather you did. The domain stays registered in your name in your own account; only the DNS records point here. Agencies that take ownership of the domain are creating leverage, and it is worth asking any of them why.
Do you host sites you did not build?
If we also maintain them, yes. Hosting a site we are not allowed to touch means being held responsible for a security update we cannot apply, which serves neither of us.

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