How to Choose the Right Hosting for Your Website and Keep Control Over It.

Why a website is important for business

In the past, a website was often seen as an additional element of prestige. Today, the situation has changed: for many companies, a website has become a primary source of inquiries, sales and communication with customers. Users are used to quickly finding the information they need through search engines, comparing prices, reading descriptions of products and services, viewing examples of work and contacting a company right away.

If a person is looking for a place to buy furniture, order a service, find a service center or check cooperation terms, they will most likely open the internet and enter a relevant search query. If your website loads properly, has a clear structure, up-to-date information and contact details, it increases your chances of getting a new customer.

However, after deciding to create a website, an important question appears: where should it be hosted, who will be responsible for the hosting and who will actually own the domain, access credentials and website files.

A website is not just design

Customers often think that a website is only about how the pages look. In reality, a complete website consists of many technical parts that affect its stability, security and future maintenance.

The main components of a website include:

• domain name;
• hosting or server;
• website files;
• database;
• email mailboxes;
• SSL certificate;
• DNS records;
• backups;
• access to the hosting control panel;
• access to the website administration area.

That is why, at the very beginning of the work, it is important to understand who registers the domain, where the website will be hosted, who pays for the services, who has access to the control panel and how the website can be handed over to another developer or administrator in the future.

Why you should not fully rely on a developer

A developer, designer or web studio can create a high-quality website, configure a CMS, prepare the design, connect forms, a product catalog, payment options or other functionality. But this does not mean that all key access credentials should be registered to them.

The most common problem occurs when the domain, hosting and website are registered not to the business owner, but to the developer or an intermediary. While the cooperation continues, this may seem convenient. But if the developer disappears, stops responding, changes their field of work or a conflict occurs, the website owner may find out that they do not actually have full control over their own website.

For example, a company contacts the hosting provider and asks to receive access to the website, but gets an explanation in response: the service is registered to another person, so access can only be provided to the owner of the account. In such a situation, the technical owner of the hosting may not be the company, but the person who once “just configured everything”.

Therefore, it is important to agree on this before starting the work: the domain, hosting and main accounts should be registered to the business owner or to the company that owns the website.

The domain should be registered to the owner

A domain name is the address of your website on the internet. A website can be moved to another server or restored from a backup, but losing control over the domain can become a much more serious problem.

If the domain is registered to a developer or intermediary, they effectively control where your website address points. In case of a conflict, loss of contact or failure to renew the domain on time, the website and email may stop working.

The correct approach is to register the domain to the business owner with up-to-date contact details, access to the client account and the ability to manage DNS records independently. A developer may be given technical access for configuration, but the main control should remain with the owner.

It is better to register hosting in your own name

Hosting is the place where website files, the database, email and other data are stored. If the hosting is registered to you, you can renew the service yourself, change the plan, contact technical support, provide access to a developer or move the website to another server.

The owner of the hosting account can:

• control service payments;
• create and manage email mailboxes;
• work with databases;
• configure domains and subdomains;
• manage SSL certificates;
• access backups;
• change technical website settings;
• grant or revoke access for developers.

If the hosting is registered to another person, even simple tasks may become a problem. For example, you may need to change the PHP version, create a database, restore the website from a backup or check an error, but without access to the account it will be difficult to do so.

Intermediaries and resellers: not always bad, but transparency matters

Sometimes a developer or web studio offers to host the website “with them” or “on partner hosting”. This may simply be reselling, when a company purchases server resources from a provider and resells them to its clients.

There is nothing wrong with reselling itself if it is organized transparently. The problem appears when the client does not know where the website is actually hosted, who owns the hosting account, whether access to the control panel is available, who is responsible for backups and what happens if the intermediary stops operating.

Before ordering, it is worth asking directly:

• where the website will be hosted;
• who the actual hosting provider is;
• who the service will be registered to;
• whether you will receive access to the control panel;
• whether the website can be moved without restrictions;
• how backups are performed;
• who is responsible for technical support.

Foreign hosting: when it makes sense

Foreign hosting is not bad by itself. For some websites, a server in Europe or the United States may be a completely reasonable choice, especially if the main audience is located there.

But if your business is mainly focused on Ukrainian customers, it is worth considering whether the website really needs to be hosted far away from its primary audience. Website speed is affected not only by server resources, but also by the distance to the data center, traffic routing, network quality and delays between networks.

In addition, a foreign provider may offer support in another language, have a different payment system, different service rules or a more complicated access recovery procedure. For a local business, it is often more convenient to choose hosting with understandable support, convenient payment options and transparent service conditions.

What to consider when choosing hosting

When choosing hosting, you should not focus only on the lowest price. A cheap plan may look attractive, but technical limitations can create more problems in the future than the money saved.

Which access credentials the website owner should have

After launching a website, the business owner should have more than just access to the CMS admin panel. It is important to keep a full set of access credentials that allow control over the website, hosting, domain and email.

The minimum set of access credentials includes:

• access to the domain registrar;
• access to the hosting account;
• access to the hosting control panel;
• FTP/SFTP or SSH access, if used;
• access to the database or the ability to create it;
• access to the website administration area;
• access to email mailboxes;
• access to DNS records;
• access to the Git repository, if the website is developed with Git;
• information about backups.

You do not have to use all these access credentials every day. But you should have them. A developer can help, an administrator can maintain the website, and a web studio can provide support, but the business owner should not become dependent on one person.

How to organize work with a developer correctly

The best option is when the owner registers the domain and hosting in their own name, and the developer receives separate technical access required to perform the work. This allows you to keep control over the website while not preventing the specialist from doing their job.

Before starting cooperation, it is advisable to define:

• who registers the domain;
• who pays for hosting;
• where the website will be hosted;
• who has access to the control panel;
• how passwords are transferred;
• who is responsible for backups;
• who updates the CMS, modules and server software;
• what happens after the cooperation ends.

After the work is completed, it is worth changing temporary passwords, checking that a backup exists, making sure the domain and hosting are registered to you, and storing all important access credentials in a safe place.