Web Hosting, Security and Maintenance in Pittsburgh.
Hosting, SSL, backups, uptime monitoring and security updates, plus a phone number that a person picks up. Most small business websites are not badly built. They are unattended, and nobody notices until the site is down on a Friday and the guy who built it has not replied in two years.
Nobody Calls Us About Hosting. They Call Us Because the Site Is Down.
Nobody wants to buy hosting. You notice it exactly once, on the worst possible day, when the site is gone or the browser is showing your customers a warning. The three situations below are the ones we get called about, over and over, and all three are the same underlying problem: the site has no owner.
The Web Guy Vanished
He built it, he was good, and then he moved, changed jobs or stopped answering. The domain is in his account, the hosting is on his card, and nobody wrote any of it down. The site works fine, so the problem stays invisible for as long as that lasts.
Nobody Has the Login
Your website, your domain and your business email are usually three separate accounts at three separate companies. Losing the one that holds the domain is the serious one, because whoever holds it controls your web address and where your email goes.
It Broke on a Friday
The certificate expired, the card on file bounced, or an update went in badly. Nothing looks urgent to anyone but you, so it sits until Monday, and you lose a weekend of calls in your busiest season without ever seeing the ones you missed.
Six Jobs, and Only One of Them Is a Server.
Most people hear "hosting" and picture a bill for a computer somewhere. The server is the cheap part and the boring part. Everything else on this list is the work that decides whether your website is still standing and still trusted a year from now.
The Site Is Served
Your website lives somewhere and answers when a phone asks for it. Fast, on cell data, standing in a driveway, because that is where your customers are. This is the part everyone thinks they are buying, and it is the least of it.
SSL Stays Valid
The padlock, the certificate behind it, and the fact that it renews before it lapses. An expired certificate does not degrade politely. The browser puts a full page warning in front of your customer telling them your site is not safe, and most of them leave.
Backups Exist Somewhere Else
A copy of the site that is not sitting on the same machine as the site. The point of a backup is not that it exists, it is that it can be restored, and that it survives whatever took the original down.
Uptime Is Watched
Something is checking that the site answers, around the clock, and it tells us when it stops. That is what monitoring means: the alert reaches us at the moment of the outage, ahead of the first customer call and ahead of Monday morning.
Security Patches Go In
The platform, the theme, the plugins and the dependencies underneath all ship fixes. Applying them is unglamorous and it never shows on the page, which is exactly why it is the first thing to stop happening when a site is unattended.
Somebody Answers
A person you can reach who knows your site, on the same phone number that is on this page. You get that person directly, without a ticket form, a chatbot, or a support tier to escalate through before you reach anyone who can log in.
A Website Is Software, and Software Rots Quietly.
This is the part that is hardest to sell, because there is nothing to look at. A site that is fully patched and a site that has not been touched in four years look identical from the outside. They stop looking identical on the day one of them gets found.
Why an Old Site Gets Found
When a security fix is published, the description of the hole it closes is published with it. That is how the industry works. The side effect is that every fix doubles as a set of instructions for finding sites that never applied it, and automated scanners work through the whole internet looking for them. Nobody targets you personally. You just get swept up.
Which is why the cost of neglect never arrives as a bill for neglect. It arrives as a cleanup, a browser warning in front of your customers, or a search engine flagging your address, and all three cost more than staying current would have.
What Keeping It Current Looks Like
- ✓Platform, theme, plugin and dependency updates applied as a standing part of the job.
- ✓Updates checked against the live site afterward, because an update that quietly breaks your quote form is worse than no update.
- ✓SSL renewal handled ahead of the expiration date, so the browser stays quiet for your customers.
- ✓Forms, phone links and booking flows confirmed to still land where they are supposed to land.
- ✓Anything abandoned upstream flagged to you and replaced while it is still working.
The Promise Is Not a Response Time. It Is That a Person Picks Up.
We are not going to print a number of minutes on a web page. Anyone can print one, and it means nothing unless it is written into a contract and enforced. So here is the commitment in plain words, which is a thing you can hold us to.
One Number, One Team
844-945-3522 is the number on every page of this site, and it is the same one you use when something is wrong. You are not being routed to a support desk that has never seen your site and cannot log in to it.
We Find Out First
Monitoring exists so that the outage is already being worked on when you notice it. The goal is that you hear from us before you hear from a customer, and that is the standard we hold ourselves to on an outage.
Small Changes Are Not a Project
A new phone number, updated hours, a service added, a photo swapped. These are part of keeping a site current, not a quote and a two week wait. Ask, and it gets done.
Hosting Is Not a Hostage Situation, and We Will Not Run It Like One.
The reason so many businesses end up locked out is that nobody ever explained who holds what. So here it is, before you buy.
We Hold the Domain and the Hosting
And you can always take it with you.
Holding the domain and the hosting is what keeps the setup cost small, and the monthly is what pays for the hosting, the maintenance and the automations. If you want to leave and take the website with you, there is a buyout, and we will tell you the number the day you ask.
The Site Is Yours Outright
The monthly is upkeep, not rent.
You own the site, and what you keep paying for is the hosting, the security updates and the support on this page. Stop, and you keep the website. That is the whole difference between the plans, and all three prices sit on the web design page in public.
Your content is a separate question from your domain, and the answer does not change by plan. The words we write for you and the photos of your work are yours, on every plan, and you can take them anywhere. There is no twelve month contract. Telling us you are done is always allowed.
If you are reading this because you are currently locked out by someone else, call us anyway. Working out where a domain and a site live is something we can usually do from the outside, from the web address alone, and we will tell you what we find whether or not you end up hiring us.
Worth Saying Plainly, Before You Spend Twenty Minutes on a Call.
This Is for You If
- ✓Your website is a real part of how customers find you, and a day of downtime costs you actual jobs.
- ✓You do not want to be the person who remembers to renew a certificate or apply an update.
- ✓You want one company holding the domain, the hosting and the site, so there is never a question of who to call.
- ✓You would rather pay a predictable monthly than a surprise cleanup bill.
This Is Not for You If
- ✕You need a guaranteed uptime figure and a contractual response time. We do not publish either, and a page that did would be selling you a number.
- ✕You are running custom server software, not a website. Sites, forms, booking and a CRM yes. Your own application with its own infrastructure, no.
- ✕You want the cheapest hosting there is. It exists, it is a few dollars a month, and none of the work on this page is in it.
One thing that is not a disqualifier, even though it feels like one. If your site is old, messy, or built by somebody you can no longer reach, that is the normal case, not the disqualifying one. We will look at what is there and tell you honestly whether it is worth hosting as it stands or whether a rebuild costs you less than keeping it alive. Sometimes the answer is the rebuild, and sometimes it is that your site is fine and just needs someone watching it.
The Things People Ask Before They Sign.
I have no idea where my website is hosted. Can you find out?
Usually, yes, and it is one of the most common calls we get. Your domain name and your hosting are two separate things, they are often at two separate companies, and both leave a public trail we can follow from the domain alone.
We can normally tell you which company holds the domain, which company is serving the site, and where the email is pointed, without needing a single password from you. Getting control back is the slower part, because the registrar will want proof you are the owner, but knowing where everything lives is step one and we can do that from the outside.
The person who built my site disappeared. What now?
This happens all the time, and it is recoverable. There are three things to recover and they are recoverable in this order: the domain name, the hosting account, and the site files themselves.
The domain is the one that matters most, because whoever holds it controls your web address and your email. If the registrar account was opened in your name, the registrar can recover it to you directly. If it was opened in theirs, there is a documented transfer process and we will walk you through it. Worst case, if the site itself cannot be recovered, it gets rebuilt, and the rebuild is cheaper than most people fear because your content and your photos are already yours.
Do I have to have my site built by you to be hosted by you?
No. We take on sites we did not build. What we do first is look at what is there, because that decides whether hosting it is straightforward or whether it needs work before it is safe to keep running.
If a site is built on an abandoned platform or a stack of plugins that stopped being updated years ago, we will say so plainly before we take a monthly from you. Sometimes the honest answer is that a rebuild costs less than nursing the old one.
What does it cost?
If we built your site, it is already in what you pay. Domain, hosting and maintenance are part of every one of the three website plans, and all three of those prices are printed on the web design page rather than hidden behind a call.
If we did not build your site, the number depends on what is there, because taking over a site nobody has touched in four years is a different job from taking over one that is current. Tell us the web address and we will give you a real number.
What happens if my site goes down on a Friday night?
We find out from monitoring rather than from you, which is the entire point of monitoring. A site that goes down at nine on a Friday and gets noticed on Monday has cost you a weekend of calls. We would rather be the ones who already know.
We are not going to print a response time in minutes on a web page, because a number like that is worth nothing unless it is contractual and enforced. What we will tell you is that you get a person, not a ticket queue in another time zone, and that the phone number on this page is the same one you use.
Why do updates matter if the site looks fine?
Because a website is software, and software rots quietly. The plugins, the theme and the platform underneath all keep shipping security fixes, and every fix that is published is also a public description of the hole it closes. Automated scanners read those and go looking for sites that never applied it.
Nothing on the page changes, so nobody notices anything is wrong, right up until the day the site is serving spam links or is flagged by a browser as dangerous. Cleaning that up costs far more than keeping it current would have.
Do I still own my website and my domain?
Ownership depends on which website plan you are on, and that is spelled out in full on the web design page. On the plan you buy outright, the site is yours. On the monthly plans we hold the domain and the hosting, which is what keeps the number up front small, and there is a buyout if you want to take it with you. We will tell you that number the day you ask.
Either way, your content and your photos are yours, and we do not use hosting as a way to keep a customer who wants to go.
Send Us Your Web Address. We'll Tell You Where Your Site Really Lives.
You only need to give us the web address. We will look up who holds the domain, who is serving the site, whether the certificate is healthy and whether anything on it is out of date, and we will tell you what we find whether or not you hire us. If the answer is that everything is fine, that is a good answer and you get to stop worrying about it. Most of the sites we look after are for businesses around Pittsburgh, though hosting is the one thing where being nearby genuinely does not matter.