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We post a lot about the importance of a web presence and its content. Occasionally, though, we like to get into the deeper nerdy details of the nuts and bolts infrastructure of a website.
We believe it’s important to have at least a general understanding of the basics of how your website is put together and where it lives.
So this week we’re taking a look at web hosting options; how they differ in features and cost and how to determine what’s the best solution for your situation.
Click her for the video version of this post!
Purpose of Web Hosting
Much like if you were hosting a dinner party at your home, where you provide the food, drinks, tables and utensils, a web host provides disk space on a server with a specific configuration of memory, CPU and storage from which your website is “served” up to your visitors in their web browser while on their PC, tablet or mobile device.
While we all like to have choices it sometimes can get overwhelming to sift through all the options. And more importantly, how much does it really matter and do you, as a faith leader, really need to care?
We would advocate for faith leaders to have at least a general understanding for the sole purpose of being fiscally responsible for this aspect of your digital ministry.
Types of Hosting
While this is not an exhaustive list of all options, it does hit on the main options you may come across.
Shared Hosting
The least expensive hosting option is shared hosting; and the old adage you get what you pay for applies here. Shared hosting means your website is allocated a certain amount of space on the same server that is hosting potentially hundreds or thousands of other websites. This means the responsiveness of your site when visitors hit it might be compromised by the traffic of all the other sites side by side yours. The cost for shared hosting can be anywhere from $3 to $10 per month. The lower cost usually allows you to host only 1 website and may allot a certain bandwidth of traffic. This might be fine for some faith communities; know that you can always upgrade with your hosting provider.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Virtually private, but not really; this means you’re sharing the physical server but with fewer other sites and your website is allocated its own partition, or virtual machine. This is sort of like having a private room for a dinner party in a restaurant. This is a step up from shared hosting, a bit more expensive, though gives better performance. A variety of configuration options are available; of course that means a sliding cost scale goes along with that. While you can find deals for $5/$10 per month, that might be a do-it-yourself config option. If you have the budget for this type of hosting and no desire or expertise to self configure, expect to spend at least $20/month or more.
Dedicated Hosting
This is exactly what it sounds like. A hosting space dedicated to your website only. When all of the server resources (CPU, memory, storage) are dedicated only to one website or company, the site will typically perform better in terms of responsiveness to your visitors. Provided of course the server specs are beefy enough to handle the traffic the site is attracting. You’d be hard pressed to find any options less than $100 per month for this type of hosting. Your website visitor traffic really has to be in the tens of thousands per month to justify this cost.
Managed Hosting
This is not so much a type of hosting as a ‘flavor’. Think of managed hosting as one stop shopping for hosting and maintenance; the provider will take care of backups, security patches and updates. Likely still on a shared platform, managed hosting will cost a bit more though be worth your peace of mind in the long run. There are also managed VPS options, managed sites exclusively dedicated to WordPress and even managed dedicated hosting.
What’s the Best Option?
Well, that depends on a number of factors.
the purpose for your website
Is your site mainly informational? Is it intended for visitors to get familiar with your community, what you believe, what ministries or Bible studies you offer, who your staff are?
If that’s the case then Shared hosting should be sufficient.
Our Digi site is on Bluehost with the Shared hosting option. Works well for us so far!
Is your site intended to handle Bible study registration, Preschool activities or host a membership portal for your community? Will it be used more consistently to serve up pages that visitors will need to interact with on a regular basis? Think preschool or Sunday school check ins. Will you want it to be integrated with your church management system in some way?
Then you’re leaning more into VPS territory as you’ll need more robust responsiveness and bandwidth flexibility.
Do you want nothing at all to do with any of this? Don’t want to be bothered with maintenance, backups, security or any techy details?
Then a managed hosting plan is the way to go. What type specifically also depends on your answers to the above concerning your intention
your budget
Answers to any of the above may be a moot point if your budget will be the deciding factor. Often in faith communities budget does play a key role in technology decisions like this. We would encourage you to put thought and intention into these decisions; thinking not just who and where you are today; but where you want to be as a community a year or 2 from now.
Key Takeaways for Hosting
If you don’t know where to start with a website or hosting or any of this, that’s ok. Chances are great that you already have personal and professional connections that you can tap into for guidance and more specific next steps. Ask for recommendations among your peers and faith groups.
If you choose a reputable host, you can always upgrade if what you have first chosen is not sufficient. It’s easier to upgrade than to downgrade. If you want to test the web waters a bit and watch your stats for 6 months to a year and make adjustments down the line, that’s perfectly fine.
Don’t be concerned about bandwidth and storage needs for live streaming or serving up videos of your services or sermons. A Facebook business page and/or YouTube channel is the way to go for these needs. All that’s needed on your website is a link to these other addresses. Easy peasy!
Fear not! If your head is still spinning, Digivangelism is here for you! We can offer you a free 15 minute consultation to get you pointed in the right direction.