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Hosting
What the server actually runs, what is included without being charged for separately, and the five questions worth asking any host before you move a site to them.
What the server runs
A UK server running Plesk, which is the control panel we administer it through. For most customers that is invisible, and it is meant to be.
| Location | United Kingdom |
| Certificates | Let's Encrypt, issued and renewed automatically, no charge |
| PHP | 8.3 available, with outgoing mail working from the server |
| Static sites | Served directly, with no interpreter in the path |
| Deployment | Automated from the site's source where we built the site |
Included rather than charged for
The certificate. Let's Encrypt is free and always has been. A host charging you separately for SSL is charging you for something that costs them nothing, and it is a reliable signal about how the rest of the relationship will go.
Configuration. Redirects, the preferred version of your domain, error pages, and the web server settings a site needs. If you ask for a change we make it rather than pointing you at a knowledge base article.
Noticing. An automated check runs every morning against every site on this server and tells us what changed. It was built after two of our own sites stopped deploying for a month without anyone realising, which is exactly the kind of failure that no error page ever shows.
What this is not right for
Worth saying plainly, because moving to the wrong host and moving away again is expensive.
- Anything needing root access or a specific operating system. This is managed shared hosting, not a virtual server
- Applications with unusual runtime requirements. If it needs a language or service the server does not run, this is not the place for it
- Sites where the traffic is genuinely large. Ask, and we will tell you honestly whether the box is the right size for it
- Anything that has to be hosted outside the UK for a legal or contractual reason
Five questions worth asking any host
Including us. If a host cannot answer these quickly, that is the answer.
- Is the certificate included, and does it renew itself? If either answer is no, keep looking.
- What happens when I ask for a configuration change? The useful answer is that somebody makes it. The unhelpful answer is a support tier.
- Who notices if my site goes down? If the honest answer is "you do", that is worth knowing before it happens rather than after.
- What exactly gets backed up, how often, and has a restore been tested? A backup nobody has restored from is a theory.
- How do I leave? A host that makes it easy to take your files and your database elsewhere is a host that expects to keep you on merit.
Question four is the one we cannot yet answer with a specific schedule, and we have not pretended otherwise anywhere on this site. Ask and you will be told what currently happens rather than what sounds good.
Would this suit your site?
Tell us what the site is built on and roughly how busy it is. If the answer is no, you will get that answer.