Simple and reliable small business web hosting

What is managed hosting and how is it different from regular cloud hosting?

Cloud hosting is how any person or business makes their application (including their website) available on the internet to anyone, anywhere. But managing your own servers (aka computers for running your application) can be very expensive, time-consuming, and complex if you don’t have the right expertise.

This is why most businesses don’t host their applications themselves, instead hiring cloud hosting providers, like DigitalOcean, who sell space on shared servers as part of their web hosting services.

Managed hosting is a step beyond regular cloud hosting or shared hosting, which still requires the person or business to configure their virtual servers for their specific needs. Managed hosting takes the burden of managing these cloud servers away from you and your business, moving the responsibility to a reliable expert provider.

Cloudways, DigitalOcean’s managed hosting service, takes care of all the complexities of running your website or application on the cloud. Cloudways ensures your website is performant, secure, and scalable.

What content management systems do you support?

DigitalOcean’s virtual machines (called Droplets) can support any type of content management system (CMS). The most popular CMS on the internet is WordPress (followed by similar CMS’s like Magento, Ghost, or Laravel), and Cloudways, our managed hosting product, is specifically designed to make using these popular CMS’s as easy and seamless as possible.

It can be important to use a managed service like Cloudways, specifically for a WordPress installation, as without a service like Cloudways it can be difficult to update and maintain your WordPress installation on your own. Keeping track of updates needed for WordPress is critical for keeping your website secure, but managing all the different plugins this takes is time consuming and often complicated.

Our managed hosting product, Cloudways, takes this burden off your shoulders and can make sure your WordPress, Magento, Ghost, or other site is kept up-to-date and secure. Learn more about Cloudways WordPress hosting here.

What support do you offer?

DigitalOcean offers every customer free support in addition to our deep and expansive set of tutorials, product-based guides, and product documentation. Cloudways customers can also enjoy an always-available support team who is ready to help 24/7/365 and can troubleshoot or help you get set up in real time. As web hosts, we care about providing the best web hosting for small businesses.

What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS hosting)?

A VPS is a type of virtual machine that, of all virtual machines, feels the most like having a physical, in-person dedicated server to the end-user.

While with VPS hosting, you may still technically be sharing server space (referred to as shared hosting) with other businesses or users, your VPS is completely private, meaning it is basically its own dedicated computer even though you’re technically using shared hosting.

Why would a user want a VPS instead of conventional shared hosting? A VPS will give you more flexibility and control over how the operating system of your application is configured, what software versions you use, etc.

DigitalOcean offers many VPS hosting solutions, which we recommend as a great lower-cost way to take advantage of shared hosting for your business’s computing needs. DigitalOcean’s web hosting services are a great way to get dedicated hosting on your own VPS.

Is a Cloudways web hosting solution secure?

A managed hosting plan with Cloudways comes with many security features (even at the most basic plans). These features include dedicated firewalls, free SSL certificate, 24/7 real-time monitoring, regular security patching, Cloudflare add-on, automated backups, HTTP/2 enabled servers, and SSH and SFTP access.

These security features, such as the ssl certificate, are one of the many reasons DigitalOcean’s Cloudways is one of the best web hosting options, particularly when it comes to hosting for small business.

Do I need hosting for website building?

Website building does require hosting – as you’ll need your site hosted in order for it to be live on the internet. But for a simple website, you won’t need complicated server resources like unlimited bandwidth or unmetered bandwidth.

Cloudways, one of the best web hosting service providers, offers very inexpensive hosting services for small businesses, and it is easy to get started!

Does managed hosting come with a free domain?

Web hosting providers don’t typically provide a free domain with their web hosting services (even the best web hosting sites), and a free domain name that will also best serve your business will be hard to come by. There are many businesses out there that do provide cheap domain names.

Which web hosting company provides the best web hosting services?

We may be a little biased here when it comes to who provides the best web hosting for small businesses, but we think DigitalOcean is the best web hosting company, and our product Cloudways is the best managed web hosting provider.

We, as a very experienced web hosting company, have built products and tools that support web hosting for small businesses.