Website hosting and choosing a fit for purpose platform

Decision Paralysis

Google the phrase Website hosting and prepare to be inundated with hundreds of offerings. From dirt cheap providers to complicated and feature rich enteprise offerings. It’s easy to get overwhelemed by whats on offer and drawn into shiny features that you may simply not need.

Throughout my career dealing with websites have largely been on the periphery of what I do. However, having helped a number of colleagues and friends over the years choosing suitable platforms, seeing first hand some of the terrible architectures that exist, and gawking at rediculous costs being charged by providers, I thought I’d share what I’ve learnt and provide some decision making criteria to hopefully assist others with this decision.

Ask yourself

  1. Intended use case
    What is the purpose of this site? Is it a simple ‘brochureware’ site to display some information about yourself, or your business? Or is it a fully fledged eCommerce site where you plan on selling goods and services. Choosing a fit-for-purpose web platform is key to supporting your use case.

  2. Resist unnessesary features
    Do you need blogging capability? payment functionality? Comments?, social media integration? Stick to the essential features and nothing more, this will only increase your costs.

  3. Technical ability and budget

    • Assess your technical ability, if IT is not your bag, then stick to simple platforms with a great user experience. If you are experienced in creating websites or a hobbyist who is keen to learn, you can save a bit of money by investing in your time.
    • How much do you want to spend? The more features and complexity the bigger the cost and/or time investment required.

  4. Choosing a domain name provider If you want to use a vanity domain name for your website (e.g. cloudybutfine.com) then you will need to register this with a domain registrar. Choosing a suitable domain registrar is a blog in itself. However, if you are after a quick recommendation then Cloudflare offer great value for their domain names, provided they have the Top Level Domain (TLD) names you requrire. They charge you at cost, which is generous.

Recommendations

Static sites are king.

Brochureware

Carrd

Blog

Have some technical nouce - Hugo on Cloudflare

All the bells and whistles

WIX, Weebly, Wordpress, Squarespace

eCommerce site

Shopify

Self hosting

Learning skills
Disposeable/OK to be hacked
Just Don’t do it.

DONT HOST FROM HOME!!!

Decision making matrix

To summarise the above, here is a run down on when to use what product

All offerings assume you want to publish a site on a vanity domain name (e.g. cloudybutfine.com) and exclude costs for DNS registration.

Offering Technical Ability use Case cost
Carrd.co Little to none very simple brochureware site cheap
Hugo + Cloudflare pages Medium to high medium to large website plus blog free
Managed Offering Wordpress,WIX, Squarespace, Silverstripe etc. Medium medium to large website plus blog medium
Shopify Medium eCommerce site high