Clear, jargon-free methods to find the right host for your project.
A CAA record tells the world which certificate authorities may issue TLS certs for your domain. Without it, any validated CA can sign—including after a DNS or registrar compromise.
A brochure site does not need a €200 EV certificate. Let's Encrypt via host, forced HTTPS and full chain are enough — without over-engineering or renewal amnesia.
A domain too narrow geographically or product-specific locks you in before the first pivot. A durable, pronounceable, legally clear name beats keyword-stuffed URLs.
DNS translates a name to an IP address — and a copy-paste mistake can cut site, email and subdomains at once. A few concepts are enough to stop acting blind.
Order emails are not newsletters — and should not ride the site shared SMTP. SPF, DKIM, DMARC and a dedicated API make the difference.
Hosting site and email in one place seems simple — until migration, MX outage or full mailbox cuts both. Separating early costs less.
`composer install` in prod is not `composer update`. Lock file, `--no-dev`, optimised autoloader and aligned PHP CLI avoid the classic 500 after deploy.
PHP 8.3 brings performance and security — but a 2019 WordPress plugin does not care. The right version is what your stack supports, not the newest panel option.
Rails 7/8 expects recent Ruby, precompiled assets, Active Job and often PostgreSQL + Redis. Few generic PHP hosts cover that scope without PaaS or a dedicated VPS.
Gunicorn behind nginx, `collectstatic`, env vars, migrations and separate media — the Django prod path fits in a few steps, provided you do not skip collectstatic.
Node runs as a long-lived process, not an ephemeral PHP request. PM2, reverse proxy, environment variables and listen port change everything — from the first Express or Nest app.
Symfony needs recent PHP, Composer, OPcache and often Redis or async Messenger. A host advertising PHP without these signals leaves you alone on cache warmup.
Laravel in production is not "a VPS with PHP." `.env`, queue workers, scheduler, Octane or FPM, and permissions are separate from the machine that runs them.
Shopify buys simplicity and platform maintenance. Self-hosted buys data control, custom checkout and margin — plus operations overhead.
Magento (Adobe Commerce / Open Source) needs RAM, cache, indexing, and dedicated operations. Treating Magento like oversized WordPress leads to predictable outages.
With 50,000 SKUs, PrestaShop does not always slow down from CPU alone. Database, indexing, cache and third-party modules often set the ceiling long before the host.
Black Friday needs occasional elasticity, not an oversized server twelve months a year. Cache, queues, payment and monitoring beat an idle dedicated machine.
Core, theme and plugins update continuously. Without staging, tested backup and execution order, production becomes the only test environment — with outages to match.
A WordPress multisite network simplifies running several sites — if you settle domains, SSL, plugins and backups before the first clone goes live.
Changing host rarely fixes a poorly optimised WordPress site. Slowness often comes from theme, plugins, database or cache — not just the server.
Managed WordPress hosting outsources updates, cache and backups — but rarely your broken plugins or custom code. Here is what you actually buy.