Small Businesses Stuck with Slow Hosting
Small business owners and individual creators are experiencing frustration and wasted time due to slow website performance, often stemming from inadequate or poorly managed hosting solutions. They're seeking affordable, reliable, and easy-to-manage hosting options to ensure their online presence is effective and doesn't hinder their goals. This often involves a learning curve and significant research before launching.
SOURCES (60)
“Oh that's right, I can use the cPanel to make a back up. Thanks for the reminder. In my Cpanel, it even says "WordPress Manager by InMotion Hosting" on the side.... so idk why InMotion said they don't host it. This has been driving me…”
“Yeah the whole thing is confusing honestly! I even saved my chats from the companies I contacted. For some reason I am paying for the domain but not the hosting... My Prof must be getting a great deal for hosting because she has never asked me to pay for it, and I never think about it. She's wonderful for that. Though she has retired and does not seem to have access to these nameservers any longer. Sigh. Can you tell I am not a web developer? I am going to review this data when I can and hop”
“You need to copy any DNS records (A or CNAME) from your site over to your new nameserver, then have IONOS update the nameserver. I recommend grabbing a local web dev off Craigslist for a short one off session to help if you aren't very technical, but also it's not that hard to figure out if you want to do it yourself.”
“Oh that's rough, losing the professor's login info after 10 years. You got the cPanel access though, that's actually huge. Grab a full backup from cPanel before touching anything else, there's usually a backup wizard in there. Then you can point the nameservers to IONOS and set up matching DNS records, the site won't break if you copy the A records and CNAME correctly. The files and database stay on InMotion's server regardless where the domain points.”
“You'd make DNS records on the IONOS side point to InMotion, and then change the nameservers from InMotion to IONOS. Think of nameservers like a phone book (if that's still a metaphor that works!) - you're changing publishers of the phone book, but the name and number inside for you are still the same.”
“For nameservers solely , the easiest way is using Cloudflare to find your DNS records - https://davidisaksson.dev/posts/dns-migration-to-cloudflare/#dns-migration is a decent guide that assumes Namecheap instead of IONOS, but should mostly work. Even if you don't actually decide to use Cloudflare's nameservers like this guide assumes, their DNS record discovery tool is unmatched, and would help you rebuild at IONOS ( https://dnsdumpster.com/ also does a good job at this). However, this d”
“You need to login to your domain registrar to change nameservers. Sounds like that is IONOS. You can just recreate all of the DNS records on IONOS nameservers and the site will still work. However you really should gain access to the website hosting account. The site appears to be hosted with inmotion hosting. So I would try contacting them again. It also appears to be a Wordpress site. Do you have that login?”
“Yippee! Would editing the dns record to point to ionos break my site and lose my files/media?”
“Just ran dig on your site. Your ONLY record is an A record pointing to inmotion. Editing your dns records to point to whatever you want is very very common and will not kill your domain registration with IONOS or the build hosted on wordpress. I frequently edit client dns records. If you want that site built, lmk…”
“If I do not have access to my site's nameservers, how can I fix this to not lose my URL and not lose my site? This is going to be a fair amount of context to explain what my issue is & why: I have a website that was created for me by a college professor. I have used this url for 10 years as a graphic design portfolio on WordPress. I have access to the cPanel, and login through wp-admin, no problem. I wanted to set up a subdomain and upgrade the storage etc. The problem is, I have zero cl”
“Just found this one, seems interesting: https://vercel.com/templates/other/serverless-wordpress”
“For web agencies, pressable is a fitting choice. it is reliable and affordable as compared to other overpriced alternatives. For a small WP website, learn to migrate WordPress and you will never have to get stuck with a shared host you are unsatisfied with. If you are an agency with many websites, you should get a powerful VPS or dedicated linux server, install a reliable control panel and host as many websites as your resources allow. if you need help or actionable advice, feel free to reach ou”
“Sounds like an extraordinary complicated and overpriced mess. $300 for 5 years or $60 for 5 years. Hosting at home? Unfortunately it’s a bunch of nonsense from someone stuck in a rut in the past.”
“Get stellar shared hosting on namecheap and pay annual, will be less than 50$ and transfer the domain there. You get everything you’ve mentioned here, I’d help you build the website for free lmao, only if you can’t though.”
“Look into Cloudflare's Workers free and Workers paid plans. On the $5 a month Workers paid plan you can both send and receive email using your own domain name. On the free plan you can only receive and reroute email to another email address, e.g. Gmail.”
“my website : https://www.jeeplanner.in/ thought to sell but a man intrested to give me 100$ for 20% of future montization plan's , was excited for this my doubt is i don't have registred company , how to make this stuff legal and guys i how to collect money form client since i didn't have paypall , if you can help me on this ! submitted by /u/National_Mobile_5137 [link] [comments]”
Netlify or Vercel are pretty good. They have a free plans
“Nah man, straight robbery. You can probably host that on the free space they give you when you register a domain on most hosting services... Like maybe $80 per year? Nowadays you could do it yourself just handing the images and text to Claude and asking for a zip file site package compatible with your particular web host.”
“the website is very confusing. take forever to figure out where to pay and how to buy credit. the right answer is to go Qwen Cloud not Alibaba Cloud (alibaba cloud does work, but it is a enterprise interface, and very confusing to setup.) Many people end up logging on Alibaba Cloud, and could not figure out where to pay.”
“Charge more for the retainer -- $200 is not even half a day per month! Also don't host this yourself. Get the client set up with their own hosting in their name that they pay for directly; of course charge them for setting it up and ongoing maintenance.”
“everyones gonna say the same stuff so ill give you a different angle. dont just track traffic, track your domain rating weekly. for a new saas your DR is probably like 0-5 and that means google barely trusts you. every quality backlink you get is like a vote of confidence and it compounds, so starting early matters way more than people think. I use Ahrefs to monitor DR and Outrank to actually build the backlinks because doing outreach manually for links was soul crushing. also set up GSC alerts”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve been considering, the last issue is its long-term cost. And depend on a company.”
“I have gotten quite a bit into self-hosting over the past few months. After countless hours of tinkering, I have ended up with the setup mapped above. I think I have covered most of the popular stuff at this point, but I am sure there are gaps or better tools I have not found yet. Curious what this community would suggest. submitted by /u/Any-Cartographer9406 [link] [comments]”
“Thank you. I will give it a try. I have heard talk of warming a domain before. I will do some reading.”
I got mine through a registrar and kept the domain and email separate so i could switch providers later if needed. Pricing usually jumps after the first year, so definitely check the…
“Self host and use Cloudflare tunnels/Firebase for MVP or landing pages where possible. Don't burn money you barely have on hosting costs until you've got actual market fit.”
“imo WordPress does not have a steep learning curve (and is not expensive in the long run like wix, etc.) if you sign up with a good host they can help you troubleshoot setup and building the site just create a support ticket every time you get stuck outlining the problem clearly. webhostingnz are great, and hosting is affordable $20/month for multiple sites on subdomains. also get elementor free and maybe a theme like astra free. then create and edit pages with elementor. I can help you if you g”
“Oh man, thank you a lot for the feedback! My server is in Finland and it's a very cheap one lol. I think that adds some latency. Also the website does a lot of pre-warming in the homepage, I know it might not be ideal, but it helped make the website feel, as you said, faster”
“All I wanted to do was have my own domain for a website where I could write shit, nothing fancy. I followed several different sites' instructions without fully understanding what I was doing and have now ended up in a bit of a muddle. I bought my custom domain using Wix but soon realised that Wix charges you to connect your site to the custom domain... then various Google searches led me to Github Pages and Vercel, and I am now trying to transfer my domain or at least change the DNS records.”
“There is no actual support. Everyone is a salesperson. People get written up for actually providing support instead of selling more stuff. “Oh? You’re having problems with X? Why not buy Y and see if that solves your problem?””
“Heard a lot about GoDaddy... Is it true that have got to cancel domain registrations just by a non-binding, non-judicialized claim?”
“its not about coolify. Coolify is just stuff where you can host it. I am talking about services, docker services, you can run. Plane.so - Heavy limits for teams, cannot buy one subscription Docmost - Also heavy paywall cannot use like 60% of features and a lot lot lot more "open source" self hostable services. You have to have enterprise versions to be able to unlock all stuff. The problem is, that they are not allowing you to buy subscriptions as one person. You have to buy it for tea”
“I've been out of the loop on server hosting for a few years. Previously used Joe's Datacenter for a solid Xeon server with Windows for only 70$ month, but after the buyout their options became much more expensive. Just need it for casual gaming with friends/family, possibly a website and SMTP server later. What's the best affordable dedicated server right now? submitted by /u/UnitedWait [link] [comments]”
“yes. maybe twice a year it will go down for 15 minutes to an hour. has to be the most, or top 2 most, reliable hosting for ecom that exists. I would not worry about that in the least”
“Has it stayed pretty reliable during busy sales or holiday traffic? That's the part I'm most worried about.”
“I mean, you can't really go wrong with hugo and cloudflare pages for a simple blog.”
“Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm new to web hosting and thinking of creating a website for personal use, but I don't know how. Any help or advice would be great, thanks! btw, I want to test a web hosting service. Is there a trial period somewhere? submitted by /u/LindaLHarkless1 [link] [comments]”
“I have been building websites since the 2000s and have probably done 50+ I've always found building sites hit and miss and could never understand why one domain did so well yet another similar domain with similar content tanked. Over time I've let sites expire and started new projects. Last year I started again, determined to make one megasite instead of lots of smaller ones. For the record, I used WordPress 99% of the time and also, for the record it's an adult themed site. Anyway”
“PageSpeed tests against a warm server, that's the gap. The cold start only shows up after the site sits idle for a while. When you run PSI you've usually just been clicking around your own site, so the function is already awake and the test never sees the slow version. To be fair I re-measured just now: first hit 0.77s, repeats 0.05-0.08s. Much better than the 6.1s I caught yesterday, so either you changed something or the thread traffic is keeping it warm. The first-hit vs repeat gap is”
“sure, but maintenance time will creep up, which also costs time and money, if all is setup correctly, redundances and so on, then its definitely whorthwhile, but its for site not a one time setup.”
“I think Claude Code might be behind the $20 plan nowadays. It didn't used to be. And no, you don't have to buy a domain. You can just use the one that Vercel gives you. Or you can buy a domain on Vercel or link one from a site like Porkbun.”
“What's up bros, Looking to hire a Web Developer and was wondering if there were any other sites besides Fiverr to find someone? Fiverr is kind of inflated with basic looking websites and I'm looking for someone with a real passion for web development lol. What's like the website where all the cool web devs go lol Thanks! submitted by /u/Far_Prune [link] [comments]”
“This might be too broad if so I’m sorry or there might be subs that are more applicable thank you if you’re able to point me in the right direction. I’m new to self hosting with some experience with homebrew/github basic setup of software and willing/excited to learn more. I explain some of my specific goals/problems more below but would love to any recommendations for beginner/your first self hosting projects in general My main goal is to not have to be reliant on subscriptions or companies who”
“+1 to netlify :) it's very 'put you're repo in, push this button, congrats you're now online'”
“I have the same concerns for my firm and data. We chose a different path and self host.”
“Try craft, their sub is way cheaper, their features are similar and it has good api and mcp access. I think you can import too.”
“pricing before building sounds logical, but we could never estimate our hosting costs or API usage fees until we actually saw how people used the finished tool.”