Hosting is your site's "home": its files and database are stored there, and that's where the data comes from when a visitor opens the site. Badly chosen hosting slows the site down, and sometimes stops it altogether. Prices look similar, but the differences between plans often hide in the small print.
What to look for
- Disk space. A small corporate site needs a few GB; a news portal or a site with lots of photos needs more. Remember that backups and email take up space too.
- Traffic and resources. How many people will open the site each day? For news sites this is the key figure. Treat the word "unlimited" with care — in practice there are always CPU and memory limits.
- Speed. The server's location and power, and caching options. A slow site loses both visitors and search rankings (more: Core Web Vitals in plain language).
- Backups. Regular backups are a must for restoring the site after a mistake or attack. Ask how often they're made and how many days they're kept (see the 3-2-1 rule).
- SSL certificate. The "padlock" in the address bar — without https, browsers show the site as "not secure". The certificate should be free and renew automatically (why this matters).
- Security. Protection from attacks, malware scanning, and isolation between accounts.
- Support. Who you'll write to when there's a problem, in which language, and how quickly you'll get a reply.
Shared hosting or a VPS?
For most corporate and small sites, shared hosting is enough: the server is split between several sites, and management and updates are handled by the host. For portals with thousands of visitors a day and projects needing special software, a VPS (virtual server) is a better fit — the resources are yours alone, but running the server also takes more know-how.
Monthly or yearly payment?
Paying yearly usually works out cheaper: with us, paying yearly means paying for 10 months instead of 12. It also lowers the risk of "the card wasn't charged on time and the site went down".
The hidden costs of cheap hosting
- Backups or SSL cost extra;
- Moving the site to another host is made difficult;
- Support only answers in English, days later;
- One site's problem affects other sites on the same server.
A domain and hosting are different things
Paying for hosting doesn't renew the domain — track both expiry dates separately. On domains: How do I buy a .az domain?
In our hosting plans
Daily automatic backups, free SSL, Cloudflare DNS and attack protection, disk and visitor stats in your account, auto-renewal from your balance and a reminder before expiry. Plans start from 15 AZN a month: hosting plans and prices. If you're not sure which one suits you, tell us about your site — we'll recommend one.
