How to choose hosting for a website: shared, VPS, cloud or static

🖥️ What hosting is and why it matters

Hosting is the computer where your site's files live. It determines how fast the site responds, how available it is and how secure it is. The best design does not help if the server answers in three seconds.

🧰 Types of hosting

• Shared: several sites on one server. Affordable and enough for most small sites with a good provider.
• VPS: guaranteed resources, more control and cost. For stores and busier sites.
• Cloud hosting: scalable and reliable, paid by usage or package.
• Dedicated server: rarely needed by small businesses.
• Managed WordPress hosting: optimised for WordPress with automatic updates and backups.
• Static hosting and CDN: exceptionally fast and secure for hand-coded sites.

🔍 What to look at

1. Server speed (time to first byte), SSD or NVMe disks.
2. A modern PHP version if you use WordPress.
3. HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 and compression.
4. Server location. For customers in Serbia a European server works well.
5. Automatic backups and the ability to restore.
6. Free SSL with automatic renewal.
7. Support that answers quickly in language you understand.
8. Renewal price, which is often not the same as the first-year promotion.

🚩 Warnings

• "Unlimited" storage and traffic, which is never literally true.
• No backups, or they are charged separately.
• Renewal twice as expensive as the first year.
• Long waits for support.

🔄 Moving to better hosting

The move is simple when done carefully: files and database are copied, tested on a temporary address and only then the domain is switched, with no loss of URLs and rankings. More on hosting and domain. For speed also see Core Web Vitals.