We use Digital Oceans high performance Premium Droplet servers with 2 core processors, deployed and managed using their CloudWays platform.

Our servers are located in London. However we are able to spin up servers in different cities if required.

Our basic website hosting starts at £360 / year and eCommerce sites start at £450 / year. However, prices can vary based on application size and demand.

There are 3 variables that have finite capacity on a server: the store space required for the application; how hungrily the application uses up the CPU; and how much bandwidth is used by users accessing the website.

If your website uses more than the standard allocation then we would move your site to a larger, more powerful server and in that case we would need to charge more.

If you have chosen to use our Cloudflare account as the Nameserver for your domain your website will be protected by the Cloudflare firewall.

Our servers are constantly scanned by Patchstack for any software with known security vulnerabilities and if any are found we will be notified and act on it.

Our servers are constantly scanned by Malware Protection and if any malware is found we will be notified and we will clean it up.

We are a Cloudways Advanced support partner which means that they will proactively investigate any issues. Some of which they will fix themselves, or if they cannot they will notify us for our developers to to resolve the issue.

If needed we can install additional security plugins on WordPress itself. However we do not need to do that for sites that we build as our sites are built securely. Such plugins are designed to offset the security risk from using plugins, and since we avoid plugins we don’t have that risk. We prefer our security services to be on the server rather than the application as security plugins on the application can slow the website down.

Yes. Our servers take daily backups each morning and retain backups for about a month. Also when moving websites off our servers we commonly take backups of the site that we then store offline.

If we both built your website and are hosting your site, then yes tech support is included as part of the annual hosting fee.

I think this is important as having a fixed tech support fee aligns incentives in a healthy way. If we built the site then we were responsible for cost/risk decisions. The less shortcuts we take and the better we built the site, the less maintenance it needs, the more profit we make from that fixed hosting. The more shortcuts we take, the more bugs arise, the more maintenance it needs, the less profit we make.

I have always been suspicious of companies that charge for bug fixes on an hourly rate, as it aligns incentives in such a way that they can pad out their bill by taking shortcuts and doing a worse job.

However if we did not build your website, we are not responsible for how well it has been built, and in that case we do bill by the hour for tech support.

Our hosting tech support covers us maintaining the proper functioning of the website as we have built it. If something we have built is not functioning properly as it was specified then it is our responsibility to fix it.

However this tech support does not cover:

• Content updates to the website.
• Development of additional feature and functionality.
• Resolving issues caused by 3rd parties.
• Issues caused by plugins which we did not install ourselves.
• Providing additional training to new team members.

Our hosting tech support covers us maintaining the proper functioning of the website as we have built it. If something we have built is not functioning properly as it was specified then it is our responsibility to fix it.

However this tech support does not cover:

• Content updates to the website.
• Development of additional feature and functionality.
• Resolving issues caused by 3rd parties.
• Issues caused by plugins which we did not install ourselves.
• Providing additional training to new team members.

The tech support that is included with our hosting only covers the work that we have done and 3rd party software installed by us. Resolving issues caused by 3rd parties is treated as additional work and will either be billed by the hour or taken out of the support retainer.

Any additional work that is not covered by the tech support is billed at £80 / hour. Alternately a 10 hour retainer can be purchased at a discounted rate of £600. Such retainers need to be paid for before the work commences.

We can take over, host and maintain 3rd party sites. However, this is contingent upon your site being vetted. Unfortunately, not all website developers have our dedication to efficient and lean code, and sites that have been built by the unscrupulous or inexperienced are often resource hogs or security risks. This effects the time and resources we need to assign to their maintenance, and thus this service is priced on a case-by-case basis.

No.

We do not do email hosting on our servers and we strongly recommend against anyone doing so.

Setting up basic email hosting on a server is easy and so its an attractive bolt on billable for many agencies. But the reality is that maintaining a healthy send score (a metric of how trusted you are and thus how likely your emails are to be sent to spam) is actually a quite difficult and specialised skill that requires continual maintance.

We would strongly recommend using a professional mailserver such as Office 365 or Google Workspace.

If you want to know more about the costs of using the same server to send mail as host your website we have a full article on it here.

Of course.

However servers are not made equal, and it is our experience that when you go for a cheap server you end up paying for it in time and issues.

We budget 1 hour for the process of setting a site live, and an unfamiliar or just bad server can require more time than that and that additional time is billed for.

Also note that when we set a website live we set a 1 month window for free bug fixes and general problem solving. After this 1 month has passed we would then bill hourly for any and all work done on the site or the server.

The common situation to avoid, is when a server or software update results in dependent code being deprecated, depreciated or made obsolete, and thus causing a fatal error that kills the website. In this situation the hosting company will refer you to your developer to fix it, and your developer will charge you to do it because they were not responsible for the update that caused it.

But from an efficiency perspective headaches arise when time is wasted by the various parties negotiating their responsibilities, having to obtain quotes, raise budgets, and obtaining agreements from other departments.

It is much smoother if the first person doing the update is the website developer. Then the first person to see the error is also responsible for fixing it; understands the nature of the problem; has the skills; has access to all the backups; logs; server configuration settings; and admin commands needed to fix the issue immediately. And in the worst case scenario has the ability and authority to immediately migrate the site to a new environment if the server is no longer fit for purpose.

This way instead of a technical issue growing into a multiday-multiparty crisis, it goes unnoticed and is resolved by the developer before they finish their first morning coffee.

Of course.

Sure. If you want us to handle that we can buy it on your behalf. You will still be the legal owner and we will maintain it for you.

Our fee for doing so it double the base cost of the domain.

We do have a company 123-reg account where we manage domains for many clients, and we can manage your domain for you if you want.

Really there are 2 options and there are pros and cons to both:

1. You have the domain in your own account and we point the domain to our server. This leaves you in control of the domain so you are always free to move to a new supplier and don’t need our involvement to do so. But it also means that you are responsible for renewing the domain and responding to any whois identification requests. Failing to do so can lead to the domain being lost. The common situation here is that you setup the account with a credit card, years pass, that credit card expires, and the payment fails and the first you realise is when the domain goes down.
2. We have the domain in our account. You are still the legal owner but we have practical control of the domain. As we maintain so many domains we are frequently in that account and will respond quickly to any issues. However our fee for doing so it that we double the base cost of the domain and if you want to leave you need to involve us to transfer the domain to a new account.

This is our preffered setup:

Domain

We like the client to have the domain in their own control panel and be responsible for renewing the domain. We think that making it easy for clients to leave aligns incentives in a healthy way.

Nameserver

We like to use Cloudflare as our nameserver. This gives us several advantages.

1. DNS updates on Cloudflare are instant and within our control. So if we need to redistribute websites on our servers, either because the server has issues, or a website needs more resources, or another app on that server is causing issues, we can clone and move the site with no downtime and no scheduling needed.
2. It allows us to use Cloudflare’s Firewall and CDN. We usually use their free service, but if the site does come under a DDOS attack (which is an attack no server can handle but which Cloudflare firewall can) then we are able to rapidly ratchet up security to protect the website and the server.
3. Cloudflare allows us to share DNS zone editing with 3rd parties. So we can share control of the domains settings with your IT company.

Email Hosting:

We would recommend using a professional mail service such as Office 365 or Google Workspace. We will point the domain there and they will provide that service.

Website Hosting:

We point the domain to our servers.

Of course. SSL certificates have been free and easy to deploy for a decade now, and we include them as standard.

Amazingly we still come across new clients whose old agencies are padding out their bill by charging significant fees for free SSL certificates.

We give clients one months grace from the due date of their invoice. After that we retain the right to take the website offline. In which case we will take an offline backup of the site’s files and database and remove the site from our servers. If later you want to reinstate the site we may charge for any time needed to reinstall the website.

If you have a cashflow issue that means that you are unable to pay your invoice on time, please let us know and maybe we can arrange something.