What is web hosting?
It involves renting space on a server. In practice, a server is nothing more than a very powerful computer with a high-speed internet connection. Web hosting makes it possible to put websites online. Essentially, you are renting your own space on the internet. Of course, high-quality hosting involves not just a computer, but an entire IT infrastructure.
What web hosting options are available?
-
Free hosting
A high-quality service simply cannot be free. You can easily come across various offers for free web hosting online. However, you will then be placing your website on a server that is likely not being maintained by anyone. You won’t know its security level or technical specifications; with a bit of luck, you might have an idea of where the server is located.
Free hosting is only slightly worse than setting up a server on your own personal computer. It is therefore an extremely cheap but very inefficient option.
-
We have our own server; our IT team can handle it
Your IT department is likely to have at least some understanding of how to set up a server. And they also know they can’t just set one up from a computer in the meeting room. They will most likely turn to a professional hosting service of varying quality.
This is a sort of compromise between the first and third options, but unfortunately it carries the drawbacks of all the other methods. It is difficult to define responsibilities, and it is not financially advantageous either.
-
Cheap hosting
There are, of course, services that offer web hosting for just a few crowns a month, such as Active24, Forpsi, Wedos and others. Naturally, you get what you pay for – for example, limited user support. You’ll therefore have to set most things up yourself.
If you’re not familiar with IT, you could easily make a fatal mistake that only becomes apparent after a long time – such as setting up the DNS incorrectly. So, you could very easily lose what you save on hosting.
-
Professional hosting
This option is the most suitable. You entrust your hosting to professionals who look after the server and are responsible for it. Someone ensures your website stays up and running, even if there’s a power cut in the building where the server is located. They handle security against viruses and hacker attacks for you and generally maintain the server. Professional servers are hosted on a ‘backbone’ network and have very fast connections, ensuring that websites can be viewed without delay anywhere in the world. AITOM, for example, also guarantees the flawless configuration of all necessary parameters.
The advantage is that you know exactly who is responsible for the server’s condition and where they are based. A definite disadvantage is the higher cost. On the other hand, however, the cost is still lower than the profit you would lose if your website or e-shop were hit by a virus.
How much does hosting cost?
The price of web hosting always includes not only server management but also the management and support of your website. You are paying for someone to keep your website running from a technical and security perspective. The cheapest hosting services can cost as little as a few dozen crowns a month. However, it is definitely not worth skimping on quality hosting. The savings may often amount to just a few thousand crowns a year, but the potential problem and its subsequent resolution usually require an investment several times higher.
The specific price is always calculated individually and takes into account many parameters relating to the level of service provision. These primarily include the size and complexity of the project, the required data capacity, server load and, last but not least, the set of relevant services we provide as part of website operation.
Quality should always take precedence over price
We take pride in the websites we create for our clients. This is primarily because we build our sites with specific business objectives in mind, and the sites fulfil these objectives. Similarly, we always recommend high-quality hosting solutions to our clients. Thanks to our solid technical infrastructure, you can rely on the website under all circumstances.
Of course, clients are under no obligation to use our hosting. However, we always recommend it as the solution we know, from years of experience, to be the most effective.
If you decide to host your website with another provider, you face all the risks we have outlined above. No development agency can take 100% responsibility for a website that is not hosted on its own server. Simply because it does not have full access to the code and data.
So, consider in advance what risks are acceptable to you. Also consider what financial losses a simple outage, a virus attack on the server, a hacker attack, the deletion of unbacked-up data, etc., could cause you.
A common argument for hosting your site elsewhere rather than with a development agency is access to the source code. Unfortunately, in the Czech Republic, we often find that agencies refuse to provide their clients with the complete source code. This is not a concern at AITOM. The code remains yours throughout the project; indeed, this is also defined in the contract we sign with our clients.