All websites need to have website hosting. Website builders such as Squarespace and Wix have hosting built-in to their platform, but if you’re building a professional website specific for your business, then you’re going to need premium web hosting.
Reliable does not just mean everything runs fine right now, it means that when your business grows and gets the attention of someone who can send a ton of traffic your way (maybe the Oprah of your industry?) then your website will stay online instead of being overloaded and your website host has to take it offline.
No one wants this, but how do you know if it will happen!? The key lies in high quality website hosting.
The Problem With Cheap, Shared Hosting
If your website is on shared hosting then it’s being shared with other websites. The problem is that if there’s a huge increase in traffic to the shared location where your website is, then it’s likely that your website will get overloaded and go offline – even if the traffic increase isn’t to your website.
On shared hosting, your website is on a server that is shared by other websites. What if the other websites are featured on Oprah? What happens to your site?
If you are on a good shared host, then just the site that is overloading the server will be taken down. Other shared hosts will take down the whole server which will affect all the websites hosted on it, including yours.
So how do you avoid this from happening? By using premium web hosting.
Our Website Hosting Recommendations
We have tried and tested a lot of different hosting platforms with high traffic websites that require a lot of processing power and we’ve settled on a few options that we’ve found to be the most reliable, have the best support and make sure your website is online and performing it’s best.
Flywheel & WPengine
This is for WordPress websites only.
WPengine and Flywheel are our number 1 recommended WordPress website hosting partner because they are reliable, scalable and have great support.
One thing to note is that they don’t provide email services so they can focus on hosting. We use them for many of our client websites. They are superb.
Siteground
For website and email hosting.
We recommend Siteground for high quality, shared website hosting and email services. They are easy to use, have awesome support and the sites run super fast. Their shared hosting is fantastic and really great value, although not our recommendation for large sites, ecommerce sites or maximum reliability. They are really great though, we have many successful client sites that are hosted with Siteground, even large sites and ecommerce sites.
They recently introduced their Cloud hosting platform which we are currently testing at the moment and has been working great.
Sign up for Siteground here (and get 60% off)
Let us handle your web hosting
With any web hosting choice, you are sitll going to have to manage any problems that come up or technical changes you want to make. We provide premium web hosting with our website support plans so you can leave this with us and get back to working on growing yor business. if you’d like to learn more, check out our website support plans here.
Email Hosting
When it comes to email hosting, we do not have a single recommended provider as there are a few options to suit different needs. All of these options require a small amount of technical skill to set up and each provider has thorough documentation to help you get up and running.
Google Workspace – when you need more than just email and have technical skills to set it up. This is what we use at Seriously Good Design and we love it. Sign up for Google Apps here.
Microsoft Office 365 – some peopl prefer to use Office 365. If you already use Outlook, then it makes sense to use this for your professional business email.
Rackspace email – we haven’t used this ourselves, but it comes highly recommended.
CrazyDomains – we have quite a few clients that have used Crazy domains email without issue. I do not recommend hosting websites with them though.
I hope this article helps to explain why you need to invest in high quality web site hosting to make make sure your site is always performing it’s best.
Author
Simon Kelly
Simon started his first web agency in 2009 which he merged with the SGD team in 2023. With a strong background in digital strategy and a history of working with fast-growing Australian companies, including CyberCX, Envato and Agency Mavericks, he's passionate about using ethical digital marketing that delivers business value. Simon's experience includes coaching digital agencies, running digital marketing workshops, driving growth and excellence within the SGD team.
Next Article
Start a Project
