Choosing Business Web Hosting: What to Ask Before You Sign
For most small businesses in Edinburgh, the website is the shop window and the booking form at once — and the hosting underneath it was usually chosen years ago on price alone. We design and host business sites ourselves, so these are the questions we'd put to any provider, ours included — and what we'd tell a client in Livingston or Musselburgh before they sign or renew.
What "uptime" really means
Every host advertises an uptime percentage, and the number alone tells you very little. An extra decimal place separates hours of downtime a month from minutes of it, but what the figure covers matters more, and so does what happens when it's missed. Some guarantees exclude planned maintenance, which is when a good deal of real downtime happens. Some pay out only if you notice and claim in writing. Better questions: is there a status page, do they warn you before maintenance, and does anyone monitor the site for you, or do they wait for you to ring?
Backups: included, or just implied?
This is where cheap hosting most often disappoints. Many plans do take backups, but for the provider's benefit — to rebuild a server after a failure, not to put your site back after a bad update. Ask how often backups run, how long they're kept, and whether you can restore a single file without raising a ticket.
- Retention beats frequency. Nightly backups kept for two days are no help if a problem goes unnoticed for a week.
- Off-server copies matter. A backup stored on the same machine as the site disappears with the machine.
- Keep your own copy anyway. The same 3-2-1 thinking that applies to your office files applies to your website — the host's backup should be a convenience, not your only line of defence.
Support you can actually reach
When a site goes down mid-morning, what decides how bad your day gets is how quickly a competent human replies. Look past the "24/7 support" badge: check which channels exist, whether there's a phone number, and whether first-line staff can do more than read a script.
Where your data actually sits
Ask which country the servers and backups are in. A UK-facing provider may well run its infrastructure elsewhere. If your site collects customer details, enquiries or payments, the location and the provider's data-processing terms become part of your GDPR position — worth taking proper advice on, not a sales page.
Software currency: the quiet risk
Hosting is software as much as hardware. If a provider still runs PHP versions that stopped receiving security updates years ago, that tells you something about everything else. A good host offers current, supported versions, lets you choose them per site, renews TLS certificates automatically and gives notice before retiring anything. Outdated platforms are a routine way sites get compromised — the same logic as keeping your own machines patched.
Migration, and getting out again
Two moments decide how trapped you feel: moving in and moving out. Ask whether they'll migrate your existing site, what that covers and what it costs. Then ask how you would leave — can you download a full copy of your files, database and email yourself? A provider confident in its service has no reason to make the exit awkward. Nor have we.
Renewal pricing and the small print
The unpleasant surprise in hosting is rarely the first invoice; it's the second. Deep introductory discounts are normal, and so is a much higher standard rate when the term ends. Before signing, find the renewal price rather than the promotional one, check whether it covers domains and certificates too, and note whether auto-renewal is on by default. Put the real ongoing cost into your IT budget, not the headline one.
Judging a provider quickly
- Ask precise questions. Backup retention, restore process, PHP versions, server location. Vague answers to specific questions are themselves the answer.
- Check the exit. Self-service full backups, no obstruction if you leave.
- Test support first. Send a moderately technical question before you buy — pre-sales is the best version of their support you will ever see.
- Match the plan to the site. A brochure site doesn't need a dedicated server; a busy shop shouldn't sit on the cheapest shared plan.
Hosting we look after ourselves
We're based in Wishaw and work with businesses across Edinburgh and the Lothians. We design and host business websites, run email-only hosting, keep WordPress sites patched and plan Microsoft 365 moves end to end. That sits alongside our business IT support, managed IT services and cyber security, with a clear quote before any work.