Website care vs. DIY hosting: what's the difference?
Every website needs hosting. Not every business needs, or wants, to manage it themselves. Here's what each option actually involves.
DIY hosting: more control, more responsibility.
Buying your own hosting account and managing it yourself is cheaper up front and gives you full control. It also means you're the one responsible for SSL renewal, backups, software updates, and security monitoring, and the one who finds out something's wrong when the site is already down.
DIY hosting means you handle
- Choosing and paying for a hosting account
- SSL certificate setup and renewal
- Backups, and testing that they actually work
- Software and plugin updates
- Noticing and responding to security issues
- Troubleshooting when something breaks
Managed website care: one monthly price, one person responsible.
Website care bundles hosting with the ongoing work of keeping a site secure and current, for a predictable monthly or annual fee. The value isn't just the hosting itself, it's having someone whose job is to notice when something needs attention.
Managed care typically includes
- Hosting through a managed account
- SSL setup and renewal handled for you
- Daily backup planning
- Security monitoring
- Software updates
- Someone to call when something breaks
A practical way to decide.
If you're comfortable being the one who notices a security warning, tests backups, and applies updates on a schedule, DIY hosting can work fine. If you'd rather that be someone else's job entirely, managed care is usually worth the monthly cost, especially once the website is actually driving business.
See what Frontier Publishing's website care includes.
One monthly plan for hosting, security, backups, and updates, with a real person responsible for it.