Host it yourself?
Zen Internet is a broadband provider as well as a web host. Its broadband bundles include a static IP address, giving each client’s network a predictable, stable location on the internet, thus opening up the possibility of on-premise hosting for both business and home users.
With fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), “you’re kind of correlating with what you’re getting in a typical data centre offering for something that’s reliable, and always on,” said Zen’s Stuart Birchall. “So, you certainly have the bandwidth to self-host. In terms of a low-traffic site, you could get yourself a Raspberry Pi, [which] will be able to run a web server quite happily.”
It’s not the simplest solution, as Birchall admits, but if you have a static IP address at your disposal and a yearning to learn, it’s an opportunity too good to pass up. “You need to think about security, and need some kind of firewall sitting in front of it so you’re protecting yourself from the internet – and there’s effort involved. I could just go and find a WordPress provider and spend £10 a month, but if I want to learn a little bit more about how it works, how to build a server, configuration management, security, then for £50 I can get everything I need to get hosting on a Raspberry Pi with a static address.”
Self-hosting is well suited to low-traffic sites, as Birchall explains, and to running self-hosted synchronisation services, like ownCloud (which is easy to set up on Raspberry Pi using a distro such as DietPi – dietpi.com). However, for commercial sites – and particularly ecommerce operations – traditional hosting likely remains a better fit. It will be configured by experts, and you’ll more often have the option to use features such as CDNs, online backup and single-click configuration through cPanel, Plesk or an alternative hosting dashboard.