Hosting for Small Businesses: What Matters, Which Options Exist, and What We Use

Hosting is one of those topics where small businesses spend the most money on the wrong things - while cutting corners in all the wrong places. The good news: for the vast majority of small businesses, the whole thing is far simpler than providers make it sound. Here we explain what really matters, which options make sense, and what we use ourselves.

What Hosting Really Comes Down To

Before you pick any plan, you should know which criteria actually count. Marketing buzzwords like "cloud", "turbo" or "premium" tell you very little. These points, on the other hand, are what matter:

• Availability (uptime): Reputable providers deliver 99.9% or more. For a typical company website, that is more than enough.
• Loading speed: More important than raw server power is often a good cache and a location close to your customers (in other words, a data centre in the EU if your customers are based in Europe).
• Location & data protection: For GDPR compliance, a server in the EU is the simplest route. Look for a provider that offers a data processing agreement (DPA).
• Backups: Daily, automatic backups that you can actually restore. A backup you have never tested is not a backup.
• SSL certificate: This should be included free of charge (Let's Encrypt). No one should be charging you extra for it.
• Support: How quickly - and in which language - does someone respond when your site goes down?

The Most Important Question First: Website or Web Tool?

The biggest decision is not the provider but what you are actually hosting. A classic company website or blog has completely different requirements than a custom-built web tool, a SaaS application, or a dashboard with a database and a login area. This distinction determines which of the following options is right for you.

The Key Options at a Glance

1. Shared Hosting

You share a server with many other customers. It is cheap (often under EUR 10 a month), low-maintenance, and perfectly adequate for most static websites, WordPress sites, and small shops. Providers such as All-Inkl, Hetzner Webhosting, or IONOS are solid choices here. The downside: you have little control and cannot freely install your own applications.

2. Managed WordPress / Managed Hosting

A little more expensive, but in return the provider handles updates, security, and performance. This makes sense if you run a WordPress site and don't want to deal with anything technical. What you are mainly paying for here is convenience.

3. VPS or Dedicated Server

Your own (virtual) server, where you have full control. You need this as soon as you run your own tools, a SaaS application, or a dashboard with a database. The advantage: maximum flexibility and excellent value for money. The downside: someone has to maintain the server - updates, security, monitoring. It's no rocket science, but it is work that doesn't happen on its own.

4. Cloud Platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure)

Powerful and scalable - but for small businesses usually overkill. The complexity and the costs, which are hard to predict, are rarely justified for a small business. We honestly advise against the big hyperscalers here, as long as you aren't genuinely pushing the limits of a normal server.

What We Use Ourselves

We run seven of our own brands live in production - including an accessibility scanner, a cosmetics product portal with around 177,000 products, a vehicle deal radar, and a marine SaaS. These don't run on an expensive hyperscaler, but on our own dedicated servers with a European provider (Hetzner), with a data centre in Germany.

The reason is simple: a well-configured server for under EUR 50 a month carries several production applications at once, is GDPR-friendly, and costs a fraction of what comparable cloud setups would burn through. On top of that:

• Automated daily backups that are tested regularly.
• SSL via Let's Encrypt - free and renewed automatically.
• Monitoring, so that we hear about problems before the customer does.

An important caveat: this setup makes sense because we can maintain the servers ourselves. For a small business without in-house tech, a managed offering is often the more honest choice - less control, but no maintenance burden.

What You Really Need - Honestly

For most small businesses, the truth is: you don't need expensive, complicated hosting. A normal company website runs cleanly and fast on affordable shared or managed hosting from an EU provider. Put the money you save into good content and a solid build instead.

Things look different the moment you run your own web tool, an application with user logins, or a database. Then a dedicated server pays off - but only if someone maintains it. This is exactly where we step in on our projects, handling hosting, server setup, and ongoing operations, so you don't have to wrestle with updates and security yourself.