Choosing hosting: what to get right first

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you only fix one thing about choosing hosting this quarter, make it the first item below.

Real-world numbers from actual visitors matter more than a score produced on a fast laptop. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Start here

Match the hosting to the site, not to the price alone. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Then this

Static sites need far less than most people buy. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Eventually

Support quality matters most on the day something breaks. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

In practice

Performance work is mostly subtraction, which makes it unpopular and effective. Three things worth confirming about choosing hosting before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Match the hosting to the site, not to the price alone — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.