Hosting, servers & DevOps
Our second speciality, and the reason the sites we build tend to stay up. We can host what we build, take over hosting for something someone else built, or just sort out the pipeline and leave you to it.
What we look after
Managed hosting
Azure or Linux, sized to what your site actually needs rather than what a hosting company wants to sell you. In your name, on your account, so you're never hostage to us.
Deployment pipelines
Push to a branch, tests run, the site deploys with no downtime. Removes the category of outage caused by someone dragging files onto a server at 5pm on a Friday.
Backups that work
Automated, off-site, and — the part people skip — actually restored on a schedule to prove they're not silently broken. An untested backup is a rumour.
Monitoring & alerting
Uptime, certificates, disk, error rates and performance. Alerts go to a human who does something about them, rather than into a dashboard nobody opens.
Migrations & rescues
Moving off a failing host, out of a hosting company that's gone quiet, or away from a developer who holds the keys. Including the awkward ones.
Performance & security
Caching, CDN, image handling, TLS, security headers, CSP. The work that turns a technically-fine site into a fast one.
Development and hosting, working together
The most expensive hours in this industry get spent with a developer and a hosting company each explaining why the problem is the other one's fault.
When the same person wrote the application and configured the server, that conversation doesn't happen. We can look at the exception, the deployment and the infrastructure in one pass, and there's nobody to hand the ticket to. It also means the hosting gets built for the application rather than the application being bent around whatever the hosting allows.
For 24/7 critical systems, dedicated cover needs to be agreed. We will explain the options before work starts.
Hosting questions
Do I have to host with you?
No. We'll happily deploy to your existing host or your own Azure tenancy. Hosting with us is convenience, not a condition.
What does hosting cost?
It depends on what the site actually needs rather than which package tier you land in. We'd rather size it properly for your traffic and quote that than sell you a round number. Where it's mostly Azure spend, we'd sooner show you the underlying bill than mark it up.
Can you take over hosting for a site you didn't build?
Yes, and it's a good chunk of what we do. We'll audit it first — occasionally the honest answer is that it needs fixing before it's worth moving.
Who owns the accounts?
You do. Domains, Azure subscriptions and DNS go in your name with us as an administrator. If we part company you keep everything and change a password.
Hosting causing you grief?
Slow site, mystery outages, or a hosting company that's stopped replying. Tell us what's happening and we'll tell you what's actually wrong.