Where should a business website be hosted?

Hosting is the service that keeps your website online. For a business owner, the choice is less about technology than about responsibility. Someone has to keep the server patched, take backups, renew the domain and answer when the site goes down. Each kind of hosting gives those jobs to a different person.

This guide replaces our older comparison of Vercel, Netlify and AWS. Those names still matter, but one question comes first: which kind of hosting fits the way your site is built, and who will look after it?

Three kinds of hosting

Shared hosting

Your site sits on a server with many other sites, and the provider maintains that server. You get a control panel, often email mailboxes, and PHP with a MySQL database, which is what WordPress needs. It is the familiar, low-cost route for a brochure site or a WordPress install.

What it asks of you: you, or your developer, keep WordPress, its theme and its plugins up to date, because the provider looks after the server, not your site. Speed depends partly on the other sites on the same machine, and a sudden rush of visitors can slow yours down.

Managed platforms: Vercel and Netlify

These platforms are made for sites built with modern frameworks, where the code lives in a Git repository. Each time a change is pushed, the platform builds the site and publishes it to a network of servers around the world, so pages are sent from a point near the visitor. There is no server for you to patch, and capacity follows traffic without anyone resizing a machine. Each proposed change can get its own private preview address, so you check the real page before it goes live. Earlier versions are kept, so a bad release can be rolled back.

Vercel is made by the company behind Next.js, and Netlify is a close alternative. For most business sites, the difference between the two is smaller than the difference between either of them and shared hosting.

What they ask of you: the site must be built for this kind of platform, and they host the website only. Email, and often the database or the content system, live with other providers.

Cloud infrastructure: AWS

Amazon Web Services, like the clouds of Google and Microsoft, sells building blocks: servers, storage, databases, networks and many other services. You can build almost anything, in a region you choose, at any scale.

What it asks of you: someone has to design, configure, secure and monitor all of it. For a business website, that is usually more machinery than the job needs. It earns its place for custom systems with specific needs for data location, integration or load, when a named person or a contract is responsible for running it.

What changes from one to the other

• Who maintains the server. On shared hosting, the provider maintains the server and you maintain the software of your site. On a managed platform, the platform looks after everything below your code. On cloud infrastructure, you do, unless you pay someone to.
• Growth in traffic. Shared hosting has a ceiling set by the package. Managed platforms adapt on their own, and the bill can follow. Cloud infrastructure grows as far as it has been configured to grow.
• Previews. Managed platforms give each change a preview address as standard. On shared hosting, a test copy of the site is something you set up and keep in step.
• Backups. Ask what is backed up, how often and how you get a restore. A managed platform keeps earlier versions of the code, but content stored in a database or a content system needs its own backup. On cloud infrastructure, backups exist only if someone configured them.
• Support. Shared hosts usually give ticket or chat support for the server. Managed platforms support the platform, not your code. On cloud infrastructure, support is often a paid extra, and it covers the services, not your set-up.

Where your data lives: UK GDPR and the EU GDPR

Even a brochure site processes personal data: contact form messages, server logs with IP addresses, and anything that an analytics tool or a chat widget collects. Under UK GDPR and the EU GDPR, the host that handles this data is a processor. You stay responsible for choosing it.

Ask three questions. In which country or region are the data and the logs stored? Is there a data processing agreement, and does it cover transfers outside the UK or the EU? Which sub-processors does the host use? Vercel, Netlify and Amazon are US companies, so the agreement and the transfer terms matter even when the servers you use are in Europe.

Your privacy notice should name the host. Ours does. If you also sell in France, French law adds one more line: the legal notice of the site must give the name, address and phone number of the host.

Lock-in and how the bill is built

Lock-in is the cost of leaving. Shared hosting is the easiest to leave: a WordPress site is files and a database, and most hosts can import it. A managed platform is easy to leave if the site uses the standard features of its framework, and harder if it depends on features that only that platform gives. Cloud infrastructure ties you most when the build uses services that exist only at that provider.

Shared hosting is a fixed fee for a package, often paid by the year. Managed platforms usually have an entry level for small sites, then charge per team member and by usage, such as traffic and computing time. Cloud infrastructure charges for what is used, line by line, so the bill is hard to predict without monitoring and spending alerts.

The cheapest hosting is not always the cheapest choice. The hours that someone spends on updates, incidents and moves are part of the cost. Our guide on what a business website costs explains the other parts.

Questions to ask before you choose

• Who owns the hosting account? It should be in the business's name, with your developer added as a user, so access does not leave when a supplier does.
• Who owns the domain, and where is it registered? The domain is separate from the hosting. Check that the registered owner is the business, that you can log in to the account, and that the renewal is paid with a card that will still be valid.
• Who controls the DNS? These settings point the domain at the website and at the email. A hosting move made without care can stop your email.
• What does the site need? PHP and a database, as WordPress does, or a platform for a modern framework? Our guide on WordPress or a custom build covers that decision.
• Who applies updates and security patches, and who do you call when the site is down?
• What is backed up, how often, and has anyone tested a restore?
• Where are the data and the logs stored, and is there a data processing agreement?
• How would you move away, and what would you need to take with you?

How DMC Kreatif handles it

Our own site runs on Vercel. Hosting set-up can be part of the quote: select it in the quote form if you want it included. At the start, we ask for access to the current website, domain and hosting, if they exist.

On a website project, the site goes live on the agreed hosting, with redirects from the old addresses where they exist. For custom systems, the support arrangement is agreed before the build starts: hosting, updates, backups and who to call. Active clients keep a direct line for changes and critical support when it matters. This is a working arrangement, not a guaranteed response time.

Tell us what the site must do and what already exists, then ask for a quote. Within 48 h you get a concrete approach, a realistic timeline and a clear quote.