What is hosting and do you need it?

As well as designing your new website, we can also host it and maintain it for you. But what is hosting, and do you need it?

Short answer is yes, you need hosting. If you don’t have hosting, your site wont have a presence on the internet. No matter how slick and sexy it is, without somewhere to host it, no one will ever see it.

It’s one of the first questions we ask when approached for a new web design project. “Do you have pre-existing hosting for your current site?”. If you’re a start up business or don’t have much experience in your new role, you might have no clue what we’re asking you.

I’m going to give you an analogy now, I like analogies.


Right, so you went out and bought a lovely new caravan for a weekend away in Skegness (don’t snigger, I like Skeggy, ok). You trail it over to the coast and look around for a campsite to set up base, get your deckchair out and start shouting at the seagulls. Fantastic weekend had by all!

But without somewhere to park up your caravan, you’re a bit stumped.

What is hosting and do you need it? Elbowroom Graphics

So if you swap caravan for website, and campsite for hosting, you might see where I’m going with this convoluted analogy. The website is the 4 walls, the bunk beds and the sky TV. The hosting is where you park it all so it can function. It’s a physical location where all your files are stored so they can be accessed.

We offer 2 types of hosting on our own server. For £80+vat a year, we will host your site and set up an unlimited number of email addresses. For £160+vat a year, you get the same, but with the added bonus of weekly maintenance and security scans. Basically, with option 2, we will chase away any seagulls that try to nick your chips – option 1 will need you to do a bit of the chasing!

Man, I could really murder a cone of chips now…

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