Website Design Townsville Flinders Street, Townsville City QLD 4810 0413 651 740
Website Design Townsville Flinders Street, Townsville City QLD 4810 0413 651 740
Website hosting Townsville businesses control, with no reseller markup
Good website hosting Townsville sites can rely on is not complicated. I set your site up on a fast WordPress host in your name, you pay them directly and you keep the keys.
Why I do not resell hosting
Many web designers bundle hosting into a monthly fee. It sounds tidy, but it means the account belongs to them, the price is often double what the host charges and moving away later can be painful. If the designer disappears, so can your access.
I do it differently. I recommend a host that suits your site, open the account in your business name and set everything up. The host bills you directly, usually somewhere around $15 to $25 a month. I add no margin. If you ever want to work with someone else, you already hold every login they need.
The features worth paying for
Cheap shared hosting crams thousands of sites onto one server. When a neighbour gets busy, your site slows down. A good WordPress host keeps fewer sites per server, uses fast storage and has caching built in. The difference shows up as pages that load in a second or two instead of five or six.
Backups matter just as much. A good host keeps daily copies of your site and lets you restore one with a click. Free SSL keeps the padlock in the browser bar. A staging copy lets changes be tested before they go live. Australian server locations are available from most good hosts and help pages load a touch quicker for local visitors.
Because the servers sit in data centres rather than in a back room in town, a power cut during a storm in the wet season does not take your website down with it.
Four things people often mix up
These are separate services that work together. Knowing which is which makes problems much easier to fix.
Your web address, registered to your business for a small yearly fee. A .com.au needs an ABN.
The server space where the website files and database live. This is the monthly cost.
Often best kept on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, separate from the website host, so one problem does not take out both.
The settings that tell the internet where your website and email live. I often manage these through Cloudflare for speed and protection.
A careful switch with no downtime
If your site sits on slow hosting or a designer’s reseller account, it can usually be moved. I copy the files and database to the new host, check everything works on a temporary address, then switch the DNS so visitors land on the new server. Done properly, customers never notice.
Email records get checked and copied first so the inbox keeps working through the move. If the site also needs a tidy up while it is moving, have a look at a website redesign or one off website updates.
Words you will see on hosting invoices and dashboards
A quick reference for the jargon hosts like to use.
A control panel many hosts provide for managing files, databases, email accounts and backups.
The certificate that encrypts traffic and shows the padlock in the browser. Free on any good host.
A content delivery network that stores copies of your images and files on servers around the world so they load faster.
The share of time your site is online and reachable. Monitoring alerts you if it goes down.
A private copy of your site for testing changes before they reach the live version.
The setting at your domain registrar that points to whoever manages your DNS records.
Hosting is one part of looking after a website
Once the hosting is sorted, these pages cover the rest of keeping a site healthy.
Common questions about hosting a Townsville website
Have a question that is not covered here? Ring me or send a message and you will hear back from me within one business day.
Website hosting for a small Townsville business usually costs about $15 to $25 a month on a fast WordPress host, billed directly by the host. Website Design Townsville and Nick set the account up in the business name and add no markup. Very cheap hosting under a few dollars a month is often slow and has poor support when things go wrong.
Website hosting does not need to be based in Townsville, because good hosts run their servers in large data centres with backup power and fast connections. Choosing an Australian server location helps pages load slightly faster for local visitors. A storm or power cut in Townsville will not take a properly hosted website offline.
Website Design Townsville, run by Nick Fritzkowski, moves Townsville websites from slow or reseller hosting onto fast WordPress hosting in the owner’s name. Nick copies the site, tests it on a temporary address, checks the email records and then switches the DNS. Done this way, visitors and email keep working through the whole move.
Business email for a Townsville company is usually safer on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace than on the same server as the website. If the website host has a problem, email keeps working. Those services also offer better spam filtering and storage. The domain’s DNS records simply point the website one way and the email another.
A Townsville hosting account held in a former web designer’s name can usually be recovered by asking them for a transfer or a full backup of the site. If they cannot be reached, a copy can sometimes be rebuilt from the live site. Getting the domain into your own name first is the most important step, because it controls everything else.
Website hosting in Townsville on a good WordPress host includes daily backups that can be restored from the control panel. Those backups sit on the same provider, so a second off site copy is worth having too. The WordPress support plans from $19 a month add scheduled backups stored away from the host for extra safety.
Not sure where your site is hosted or who holds the logins? Send me your web address and I will find out.
