When you build a website, the code is the house, but the hosting is the land it sits on. You can build the most beautiful, high-performance mansion in the world, but if you build it on a swamp, it will sink.
For many business owners in London, hosting is an afterthought. They see an ad for "Web Hosting for £2.99" and sign up. Months later, they wonder why their site is slow, why emails are going to spam, or why the site crashes during a marketing campaign. Understanding the difference between hosting types is critical for the stability and speed of your digital presence. Here is the plain English guide to the three main tiers of hosting.
1. Shared Hosting: The "Student Flat Share"
Shared hosting is the entry-level option. Imagine a large apartment building where everyone shares the same water supply, electricity, and Wi-Fi.
How it works: Your website sits on a server alongside hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other websites. You all compete for the same resources (CPU and RAM).
- Pros: It is incredibly cheap (£3–£10/month) and easy to set up.
- Cons: The "Noisy Neighbour" effect. If a website sharing your server gets a sudden spike in traffic, your site slows down. If another site on the server gets hacked or sends spam, the entire server’s IP address might get blacklisted, meaning your emails start going to spam folders.
- Verdict: Fine for a personal hobby blog. Unsuitable for any serious London business. The risks to speed and security are too high.
2. VPS (Virtual Private Server): The "High-End Apartment"
A VPS is the sweet spot for most growing businesses. Imagine a building divided into distinct, private apartments. You still share the physical structure (the server), but you have your own dedicated walls, water supply, and electricity meter.
How it works: The server is virtually partitioned. You are guaranteed a specific amount of RAM and processing power that nobody else can touch.
- Pros: Much faster and more stable than shared hosting. If another site on the physical server crashes, your site remains unaffected. It is scalable—you can usually upgrade your "apartment" size with a click.
- Cons: Slightly more expensive (£20–£80/month) and requires more technical knowledge to manage (unless you use a managed service like ours).
- Verdict: The minimum standard for professional SMEs. At Custom Coded Websites, we deploy our Python/Django applications on high-performance cloud VPS infrastructure to ensure consistency and speed.
3. Dedicated Server: The "Detached Mansion"
This is the heavyweight option. You own the entire building. No neighbours, no sharing.
How it works: You rent an entire physical machine in a data centre. Every single resource on that machine is dedicated solely to your website.
- Pros: Ultimate performance and security. You have total control over the server environment, allowing for complex custom configurations.
- Cons: Expensive (£150–£500+/month). If hardware fails, it is your problem (unless managed). It is often overkill for a standard business website.
- Verdict: Necessary only for massive e-commerce stores, enterprise platforms, or businesses with extremely strict data compliance requirements (like some Fintech firms in the City).
The "Managed" Difference
Regardless of the tier, you have another choice: Unmanaged vs. Managed.
Unmanaged: The host gives you the keys to the server and walks away. You are responsible for security patches, updates, and fixing it when it breaks.
Managed (Our Approach): This is what we provide. We handle the technical "plumbing"—the updates, the backups, the security firewalls—so you just enjoy a fast website. For a business owner, unmanaged hosting is a false economy; the money you save is lost the moment you have to spend three hours fixing a server error.
Summary: Don't Skimp on the Foundation
Your hosting directly affects your Google rankings (speed) and your customer trust (security). Saving £20 a month on cheap shared hosting is not worth losing a £2,000 client because your site wouldn't load.
We build our clients' sites on robust, scalable cloud architecture designed for performance. If you are tired of slow load times and downtime, it is time to move house.
Contact Custom Coded Websites to discuss a migration to high-performance hosting.