Your site stays up, secure, and backed up without you having to think about it

Regular hosting rents you server space and nothing else. Everything that keeps a site running (security certificates that expire and need renewing, backup copies, software updates, version management, monitoring for outages, troubleshooting when something breaks) is your responsibility to figure out and pay for separately. Managed hosting means one person actively handles all of that on your behalf: pushing software updates before vulnerabilities become problems, storing backup copies somewhere other than the main server, renewing your security certificate before it lapses, watching the site around the clock, and fixing things fast when they go wrong. The practical difference shows up on a Sunday night when a server update quietly breaks your contact form: on a managed plan, that gets caught and fixed before your business opens Monday morning; on a self-managed shared hosting account, you find out when a customer emails you to say your site is not working. For a thorough breakdown, see the managed hosting explainer and the maintenance scope guide.

Three flat-rate plans billed monthly with no annual contract. Core is $60 per month and covers the basics: monitoring for outages, nightly backup copies stored offsite, security certificate management, domain name management, server-level security patches, and email support with a 24 to 48 hour response window. Care is $100 per month and adds one hour of content edits each month, proactive software updates applied on a schedule, a priority response queue, and a quarterly performance review. Priority is $180 per month and adds three hours of monthly content edits, same-day response for critical issues, monthly analytics reporting, and access to a test environment for trying changes before they go live to your customers. To put the numbers in context: one hour of developer time to troubleshoot a hosting problem on a self-managed account generally costs more than two months of the Core plan. Full plan details are on the pricing page, and the hosting cost guide walks through what drives pricing across different provider types.

Yes. Hosting has no long-term contract: cancel anytime with 30 days' written notice and no cancellation fee. Your site stays live through the end of your current paid period, so you have time to move it elsewhere if you want to. Before hosting ends, you get a complete export of your site files and any database, with no charge for the export and no migration fee for taking your own files. Server data is retained for 30 days after the paid period ends in case you need to request an export or there's a dispute, then it's purged; you can reinstate hosting within that window without rebuilding anything from scratch. The only thing you lose when you leave is the ongoing monitoring and maintenance. The site itself is yours regardless of whether you stay.

Core ($60 per month) is the right fit for sites that are stable and don't change often: an informational site updated a few times a year, a portfolio, a landing page running a specific campaign. Care ($100 per month) works for most active small businesses. The monthly content edit hour means price changes, new team members, updated hours, and seasonal updates don't require a separate conversation or a new quote. Priority ($180 per month) is for businesses where the website is a primary revenue or operations tool: a site that books appointments, handles online transactions, or gets significant traffic where downtime has a meaningful cost. The monthly analytics report and test environment at Priority are worth it for owners who actively track how the site performs as well as what it says. If you're not sure, Care covers the majority of small-business scenarios without overpaying for features you'd rarely use.

In most cases yes, with one prerequisite: a brief code review before the hosting relationship starts, checking that the codebase is maintainable, doesn't have obvious security problems baked in, and won't need emergency cleanup shortly after transfer. Clean hand-coded PHP passes without issue, as do well-maintained WordPress installs. Heavily plugin-dependent WordPress sites with a backlog of deferred updates, sites built on abandoned frameworks, or sites running outdated PHP versions may need some cleanup work first. The review isn't a billable engagement: it's a due-diligence step before taking on ongoing responsibility for a site ArdinGate didn't build. If remediation is needed before hosting is viable, that gets quoted separately with no pressure to proceed. Sites in good shape usually move through the review quickly and can be migrated within a few days. Get in touch with details and I can assess.

Your site stays live through the end of your current paid period. Before it comes down, you receive a complete export of everything (all PHP files, CSS, images, and a database dump if there's one), so you can move it to any other host without losing anything. After the paid period ends, the site comes down and server data is retained for 30 days before being deleted, in case you need the export or there's a billing dispute; you can reinstate hosting during that window without rebuilding the server environment from scratch, and there are no reactivation fees. If you cancel and come back later, pricing picks up at the current plan rates. The export is provided regardless of the reason for cancellation, not contingent on being in good standing or any other condition.

Every night, a complete copy of your site files and database is created and sent to a storage location physically separate from the hosting server, not a second folder on the same machine, but a completely separate destination. If the server is compromised, has a hardware failure, or a bad update overwrites your files, the backup copy at the separate location is unaffected. Copies are kept on a rolling 30-day basis, so you can restore to any specific day within the last month, covering the vast majority of situations where you need to go back in time: a plugin that breaks something, content you accidentally deleted, a change that went wrong, or a migration that didn't work out.

Monitoring checks your site from external servers every 60 seconds, confirming that the site is responding correctly: not just that the server hardware is running, but that your site software is processing requests and sending back a working page. A server can be online while code errors make every page show a blank screen or an error message, something a simple connectivity check would miss entirely. When a check fails, an alert fires immediately and investigation starts. Core plan clients get the standard 24 to 48 hour response window; Care clients get a same-business-day response; Priority clients get same-day response for critical issues. You're notified when an outage is confirmed and again when the site is back up, along with a brief explanation of what caused it. Most outages are resolved before visitors notice anything.

Software updates cover two layers: the server and the site code running on it. At the server level, that means updating the programming language version, the web server software, and the operating system with security fixes applied on a regular schedule rather than only when a crisis forces action; this layer is included on every plan, including Core. At the site level, it means monitoring any tools or components used in your site code and updating them when security problems are disclosed publicly, plus WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates for WordPress-based sites. That layer starts on the Care plan. Priority adds test verification before anything touches your live site: updates are tried in a private copy first, then applied to your live site after confirming nothing broke. Server-level maintenance is included in every plan; site-level patching starts at Care. For a broader look at what website security involves, see the website security basics guide.

A test environment is a private copy of your site that runs on the exact same server setup as your live version, identical in every way: software version, database, and file structure. If a change works correctly on the test site, it'll work correctly when it goes live. This is included in the Priority plan and is most useful for testing a major update before publishing it, making sure a software update doesn't break existing functionality, or building new pages without them being visible to the public while still being worked on. For most small businesses on Core or Care plans, a test environment isn't necessary, since changes are small enough that a quick review before publishing is fine. If you're actively building new features on a site that's already live and getting visitor traffic, Priority with test access is the right plan: you don't want to test big changes on a page your customers are actively using.

The monthly content edit hour covers changes to existing content on your site: updating text on any page, swapping an image, changing your hours or prices, adding or removing a team member, updating a service description, editing an FAQ item, updating a phone number or address, changing a link or call-to-action button. What falls outside it and gets quoted separately: adding a brand new page, changing the site's navigation structure, building a new feature like a booking form or photo gallery section, or anything requiring new code rather than updating existing content. Unused time doesn't roll over: the hour resets on your billing date. Most Care plan clients use somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes of the monthly hour; if you find yourself consistently needing more, Priority gives you three hours.

The first year of domain registration is included free with every new build, registered in your name at a registrar you control, not ArdinGate's account. After that first year, you decide how renewals get handled: keep managing the domain yourself, or ask me to handle renewals as part of your hosting plan. Either way, every hosting plan includes domain name management: pointing your domain at the hosting server, setting up subdomains, managing the records that route your email to your inbox, and adding verification records for services like Google Search Console or the email authentication settings that keep your outgoing emails out of spam folders. Email itself is separate from website hosting; most small businesses use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and both work alongside any website hosting arrangement without friction. Setting up the domain records for your mail provider is included in the standard hosting setup at no extra charge.