WEB HOSTING | SINCE 1999 | FREE MIGRATION, FREE SSL, SAME PRICE AT RENEWAL
Business Web Hosting Built by SEO Experts: Fast, Secure, and Answered by People Who Build Websites
Big hosts sell you a plan. We built our own platform in 1999 because they could not meet the needs of a web design business, and we have tuned it for search ever since. Your site runs on servers we tune for Core Web Vitals, we move it for free, and the support line reaches a person who builds WordPress sites for a living. Compare the plans, then compare the support.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253
Plans
Three ways to host with us
The price you sign up at is the price you renew at. Every plan includes free website transfer, free SSL and firewall, and support by phone, email and ticket.
Compare
How we compare with the big hosting brands
Vertical Web
- Support answered by the developers who build sites
- Free migration, URLs and rankings preserved
- Server tuned for Core Web Vitals, per site
- Daily WordPress backups to AWS with a tested restore
- Free SSL that renews itself, packet-filter firewall
- Unthrottled bandwidth so Google can crawl everything
- Same price at renewal
- SEO help one call away, free audit on request
- Knowledge base written by us
Typical large host
- Outsourced tier-one support
- Sometimes, DNS only
- Shared defaults
- Backups as a paid add-on
- SSL included, firewall extra
- Throttled on lower tiers
- Renewal often double or triple the sign-up price
- No SEO help
- Knowledge base, yes
Why hosting affects rankings
Speed, uptime and the person on the other end
Google measures how fast a page loads, how fast it responds and whether it shifts around while loading, and it has promised an algorithmic boost for sites that pass. Those three numbers are decided at the server as much as in the design, which is why we never hand hosting to a third party and why the technical work in the SEO program gets done at the server level here.
Our only business is websites. We have built them, hosted them and marketed them for 28 years, and we treat a client’s business as if it were our own. That is also why hosting clients get a free audit on request and why every site we build in Houston web design lives here.
If your site is down, slow or throwing an error right now, start with our guide to checking whether a website is down or not working. It covers the five minute checks, the usual causes and what a host should have done to prevent it.
Included
The Vertical Web difference, on every plan
Support
We support our clients, and the knowledge base is public
Chat with us, email techsupport@v-web.com, or call 713-703-3030. The knowledge base is written by the team that runs the servers and is open to anyone, which is how many hosting clients found us. Billing, services and tickets live in the client portal linked at the top of every page. Start with the knowledge base, and if the site needs more than hosting, web development is the same team.
What it costs
How much does business web hosting cost for a small business?
Business web hosting costs anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars a month. Our own plans start at $7.95 a month for shared hosting, $11.95 a month for WordPress hosting with SEO bundles and $99.95 a month for managed dedicated hosting. The real question is not the sticker price. It is what the price leaves out.
Watch for three things when you compare pricing. First, the renewal rate. Many large hosting providers advertise a low first-year price, then raise it sharply at renewal. Our renewal price matches the price you signed up at. Second, the add-ons. SSL, backups, migration and plugin licenses are often extra elsewhere, and they are included here. Third, the word unlimited. Unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage on a shared plan usually come with limits in the fine print, and your site slows down when you hit them. We describe ours as unthrottled because that is the part that matters for Google.
For most small business sites, the cost of hosting is small next to the cost of a slow or broken website. A host that saves you $5 a month but loses you one customer a month is the expensive option. Our guide to what web hosting costs should be goes deeper on the numbers.
Shared, VPS, cloud or dedicated
Which hosting plan does your business website need: shared hosting, VPS or cloud?
Shared hosting puts many websites on one server and splits its resources. It is the right starting point for a small brochure site or a startup that needs to get online. It is not the right home for a busy WordPress site, an online store or a site that handles customer data.
Upgrade from shared hosting when your traffic grows, when your pages slow down at busy times, or when you need more control over the server. VPS hosting gives your site its own slice of a server with guaranteed resources. Cloud hosting spreads the load across several machines, which helps when traffic spikes. Dedicated hosting gives you a whole server, with the most performance, the most access and the most security. Our cloud, VPS and dedicated hosting page compares the options side by side.
Beth makes a point in class that most owners never hear: on a shared server, your neighbors matter. If your business shares an IP address with spam or adult sites, Google treats that like a nice house on a bad street. A business hosting provider that screens what runs on its servers protects your rankings as much as its uptime does.
What is the difference between cPanel hosting and WordPress hosting? cPanel is a control panel for managing files, databases and email on a server. WordPress hosting is a server set up specifically to run the WordPress CMS fast and securely, with caching, updates and backups tuned for it. Our WordPress hosting is built that way for the sites we design.
Site hosting and search
Why site hosting from a web design and SEO company beats a website builder
Does Wix do hosting? Yes, but only for Wix sites. Website builders such as Wix and Squarespace bundle the design tool and the hosting together, which is easy on day one. The trade-off is that you cannot move your website to another provider, you have limited control over speed and code, and your SEO options stop where the platform stops. If you ever outgrow it, you rebuild from scratch. Beth made the same point in the July clinic on digital marketing with AI: the deep page structure that gets a site cited in AI answers cannot be built on Squarespace, which is why we build and host on WordPress.
We have seen the hosting side of SEO firsthand. Beth tells the story in class of a site that was ranking well, moved to a big-name host, and lost its rankings because of a misconfigured server. It moved to us, nothing else changed, and the rankings came back. The content did not change. The server did.
That is why our hosting is built by the same team that handles SEO web design in Houston. Different businesses lean on the server in different ways: an IDX real estate site, a WooCommerce store and a medical practice with intake forms each need something else from it, and our Industries We Serve web design and SEO pages show what each market needs. A good question to ask any host is how it handles caching at the server. If the person on the phone cannot answer it, you have learned how they run their servers. Ask about customer support too: who answers, how fast, and whether they can fix a WordPress problem or only reset a password.
Email, domains and the rest
Does business hosting include email, domains and backups?
A business website is more than files on a server. It needs a domain that you own, DNS that points to the right place, SSL, backups and, for most companies, a professional email account that matches the domain. Ask any hosting provider which of those are included and which are extra, and who you call when one of them breaks.
Every plan here includes a free domain for the first year, DNS managed next to the hosting, free SSL, the firewall and free website transfers. WordPress sites get daily backups to AWS. If you want to talk through email setup, storage needs or a site with special requirements, our team will answer in plain English. Start with the hosting knowledge base or call 713-703-3030.
The bottom line on business web hosting: you are not buying disk space. You are buying speed, security and someone who answers. Pick the provider that will still pick up the phone when your site is down at 4 p.m. on a Friday.
Questions
Web hosting FAQ
Yes. Migration is included on every plan and we preserve every URL, so the rankings move with the site.
Yes. The price you sign up at is the price you renew at. The free domain covers the first year.
Yes, and most hosting clients start that way. Many later ask us to fix or redesign it.
The WordPress install with free licensing for plugins we use and teach, including Elementor Pro, Gravity Forms and Akismet, daily backups to AWS, free SSL and the firewall, and support from WordPress developers.
WooCommerce stores get the ecommerce tier with larger resources and object caching. Shopify stores stay on Shopify; we host the WordPress site around them.
On infrastructure our own IT team manages, with WordPress backups to AWS. We have run our own platform since 1999.
Our plans start at $7.95 a month for shared hosting, $11.95 a month for WordPress hosting with SEO bundles and $99.95 a month for managed dedicated hosting. Migration and SSL are included, and the renewal price matches your signup price.
For a small brochure site, yes. Busy WordPress sites, online stores and sites that handle customer data are better on WordPress, VPS, cloud or dedicated hosting with more resources and security.
When traffic grows, pages slow down at busy times, you add ecommerce, or you need more control over the server. We can review your site and tell you whether an upgrade will actually help.
Wix hosts sites built on Wix only. You cannot move a Wix site to another host, so if you outgrow the platform you rebuild. WordPress hosting lets you move whenever you want.
Move your site to hosting that helps it rank.
Free migration. Same price at renewal. Support from people who build websites. Call 713-703-3030 or get started online.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253 | info@verticalweb.com