Hosting
WordPress hosting and care, run by one named person
A hardened server, patched proactively, backed up properly, monitored around the clock, and configured by me rather than sold on from a shared reseller plan.
The honest version
You can host a WordPress site for £5 a month. If it's a brochure site that nobody depends on, do that. Genuinely, don't pay me more for the same outcome.
What I offer is different: a hardened server, patched proactively, backed up properly, monitored, configured and managed by me rather than sold on from a shared reseller plan, with one named person who knows your site.
That costs more than £5.
Plans
Three of them, and one price list
| Per month | Essential, £25 | Priority, £45 | Platform, from £150 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backups | Weekly, 4 kept | Daily, 31 kept | Agreed to match how often your data changes |
| Updates | Monthly | Weekly | Weekly, plus urgent ones out of cycle |
| Staging | Yes | Yes | Yes, plus cloning |
| WAF and patching | 7G, Patchstack, Cloudflare | Same | Same, plus Cloudflare Pro |
| Reporting | Quarterly | Monthly | Weekly |
| Support response | 3 working days | 2 working days | 1 working day |
Hosting prices exclude VAT. The one page website and mail products are quoted inclusive of VAT and are priced on the websites page. Pay monthly, or pay for the year up front and get twelve months for the price of eleven.
If you build WordPress sites for clients, you can host them here at these prices and mark them up as you see fit. I can stay out of sight or deal with your client directly, whichever suits you.
Monitoring runs around the clock. The response windows are a different thing.
Your site and the server under it are monitored continuously, and the platform team at GridPane act on server and site level problems as they arise, whatever hour that happens to be. Most of the time the first you hear of an incident is when it appears in your report, because it was dealt with before it became your problem.
That cover is specific to WordPress. GridPane is a WordPress platform and it is the reason this arrangement exists. If I host something for you that isn't WordPress, it sits elsewhere and the monitoring and response around it are a different conversation. Ask, and I'll tell you exactly what applies to your site rather than letting you read across from this page.
The response windows in the table are about me, not about that. They cover questions, changes, and anything needing a decision rather than a fix. Two working days on a Priority plan means I will have answered you, not that a broken site sat there for two days.
The windows are deliberately unheroic because they are ones I can meet on a busy week rather than a quiet one. A published window that always holds is worth more than a shorter one that slips twice.
How to reach me
Support is by email, and it raises a ticket. That is deliberate rather than bureaucratic: a ticket has a number, it does not slide down my inbox behind something noisier, and next time the same thing happens we can both read what we did about it last time.
WhatsApp as well, for the quick ones. A screenshot of the error beats three paragraphs describing it, and plenty of things are answered in a line. If a message turns out to be real work I'll open a ticket for it and tell you I have, so nothing important lives only in a chat thread.
A line worth drawing now, so it's never an awkward conversation
"My site is broken" is support, and it's in your plan. "Should we do X?" is advice, and that's an advisory session.
Included in every plan
Staging on every tier, including Essential, which most hosts charge extra for. Uptime monitored continuously and reported with the actual figure, so you can see it rather than take my word for it. Core Web Vitals reported on your plan's schedule rather than mentioned once at build time. Auto-renewing SSL. Transactional email through Postmark so your forms actually arrive. Broken link scanning. Two-factor on everything. Support by email or WhatsApp, whichever suits the question.
What it runs on
- GridPane
- Vultr
- DigitalOcean
- Cloudflare
- Patchstack
- Redis
- Postmark
If any of those names mean something to you, you know exactly what you're getting. If they don't, the point is that there's a specific answer rather than a vague one.
What's yours, and what isn't
Most hosts are vague about this and it is the thing that traps people, so here it is properly.
Yours
- Your domain and your DNS, in your name.
- Your content, your database and your files. A complete export whenever you ask for it, not only on the way out.
- Your data, including anything your site has collected.
Not yours, and this is the part other people fudge
The server isn't. Your site runs on a machine I own and share between clients. That is the whole reason this costs £25 a month rather than several hundred: you are buying a share of a properly managed server rather than renting one of your own and then needing somebody to look after it.
If you want a server that is genuinely yours, in your name and on your card, that's a different conversation and a perfectly reasonable one. Say so and I'll quote it.
If you leave
You get a full export of the site, files and database both, in a form another host can stand up. I'll help whoever takes it on rather than handing over a zip and going quiet. No exit fee, no proprietary configuration, no thirty day hostage period.
What can't come with you is the protection around it. The WordPress security tooling, Patchstack, GridPane Fortress and the firewall rules, plus the server configuration and tuning underneath, all sit on my subscriptions and my machine rather than yours. They stay here. Your new host will have their own equivalents and a good one will set them up. They just won't be these, and anybody who tells you a WordPress site moves in its entirety has not moved many.
Questions
The things people ask
Can you migrate my existing site?
Yes, included, and with no downtime worth noticing. I've done a great many of these.
And can you migrate it away again later?
Yes, and I'll help rather than just permit it. How much work that is depends entirely on where it's going, so tell me and I'll be straight about what moves cleanly and what has to be rebuilt at the other end.
What's the notice period?
A month, and I won't argue about it.
What does managed not include?
Content changes, new pages, design work and new functionality are separate. Quoted. I'd rather be clear now than surprise you with an invoice.
Who owns the server?
I do. Your site shares it with other clients, which is what makes the price what it is. Your domain, your content and your data are yours and exportable at any time. If you want a server in your own name instead, ask and I'll quote that separately.
Do you host sites that aren't WordPress?
Sometimes, and the arrangement is different. The plans on this page are built around a WordPress platform, so a site that isn't WordPress sits somewhere else with its own monitoring, its own updates and its own response. Ask and I'll tell you what it would actually look like rather than selling you this page.
What happens if the site goes down at 2am?
Monitoring picks it up immediately and GridPane's platform team work on server and site level faults at any hour. Most incidents are resolved before anybody rings anybody. If it turns out to need me specifically, I pick it up and your plan's window applies to the conversation rather than to the fix.
I like to talk before you buy, because sometimes the answer is that you don't need this.