Back in our early days, we learned quickly just how important having a well maintained, managed website is for our clients and for us.
Let’s begin by clearing up a few terms:
Hosting is the place where your website lives and is paid for monthly.
Managed hosting is adding the monthly service that covers critical issues such as security, updates, and support. These are the things that keep your site safe, running properly, and looking good.
We realized there is often a gap between handing over a freshly designed and built website, and having someone to manage it when issues arise. Who is responsible for fixing these problems?
The reality is, client managed hosting doesn’t exist. So you’re responsible for paying the bill for hosting, right? But how can you be expected to fix issues such as a hacked site, outdated plugins, uneditable pages? These issues end up falling back to the designer or developer that built the site.
The problem: Who is actually accountable for these issues?
The designer executed the structure, functionality, and aesthetic of the site. The developer created and built this experience/tool for the client and their customers. The site was flawlessly handed over to the client. Now what… 3 years down the line, the site is hacked. The client doesn’t feel they should have to pay for additional work to make the site function as it should (and we agree with this sentiment). BUT someone still has to fix the issue, and no one is happy.
This is why managed hosting is so important. The goal is to prevent these problems from occurring, and to have the ability to promptly fix issues when they do arise.
Ultimately, managed hosting takes the stress out of maintaining a website. It spreads out any unsightly costs for clients by having to return to the designer/developer and getting billed for a big bug fix that could have been managed and mitigated over time (and with proper upkeep).
At Nifty, (and at Sonder) we see it as being a responsible service provider.
Learn a bit more about managed hosting and read our full post here.
