Shared Hosting vs Managed AWS Hosting: What's the Difference?

Your website lives on a computer somewhere — that’s “hosting”. Where that computer is, and who’s looking after it, make more difference than most small business owners realise. This is the plain-English version, no jargon you’d need to Google.

What is shared hosting?

Imagine renting a desk in a busy co-working space. There’s one wifi router for everyone. One printer. One kettle. It’s cheap and it works, and the building manager keeps the lights on — but your desk is yours to look after.

Shared hosting is the website version of that. Your site sits on a single computer alongside many other websites, all sharing the same processing power, memory, and internet connection. Good hosts set limits so no one site hogs it.

Typical cost: £3-10/month

What you usually get:

• Space for your site on a server shared with many other sites
• A control panel to manage it yourself
• Email accounts on your domain, often included
• Support from the people who look after the servers, usually by ticket or chat
• Backups that vary from host to host — check how often they’re taken, how long they’re kept, and whether restoring one costs extra

The trade-off: The host looks after the server, not your website. Keeping the site’s own software up to date, putting it right when a change goes wrong, and making changes to it are usually down to you or whoever built it. And because the server’s power is shared, a site that suddenly gets very busy can run into the limits the host sets for each account.

How common is shared hosting?

It’s the cheapest kind of hosting to buy, so it’s common, including behind many low-cost website packages. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Whether it suits your site depends on what your site has to do, which is what the rest of this post is about.

For a lot of sites, shared hosting is fine. For a business that depends on its website for enquiries, bookings, or sales, the bigger question is who looks after the site, and how quickly they can put it right if something goes wrong.

What is managed AWS hosting?

AWS is short for Amazon Web Services — Amazon’s cloud computing platform. Netflix runs on it. Airbnb runs on it. BBC iPlayer runs on it. Just Eat runs on it. When you press play on Netflix or order a takeaway through Just Eat, you’re using AWS without realising.

Managed AWS hosting means your website runs on the same cloud platform those companies use, at a small-business price. That doesn’t make a website good on its own — a badly built site is still slow on AWS. “Managed” is the part that matters: someone (us) handles the technical side, so you don’t need to learn cloud engineering to run a website.

Typical cost across the market: £20-75/month

Ours: £20/month on its own, or included in our £50 a month plan for the build and the hosting.

What you get with ours:

• Your site hosted on AWS, with Cloudflare in front — Cloudflare’s standard protection against floods of fake traffic, and your photos and files cached close to your visitors
• The padlock in the address bar, with the certificate issued and renewed automatically and its expiry checked every day
• 60 days of change history — earlier versions of every file on your site are kept, so a mistake can be rolled back
• Your site checked every morning, with an alert to us if it’s down
• Nothing to patch — the site is static, with no plugins, no database and no server software for you to keep updated
• Small content updates done for you — text changes, photo swaps and small tweaks (about 30 minutes of work a month)
• When something’s wrong, you ring the engineer who built it — not a call centre reading a script

The real-world differences

Speed

How quickly a page opens depends mostly on how the site is built: the size of the photos, how much code each page carries, and how many add-ons it runs. Hosting plays a part — a slow or overloaded server adds a wait before anything appears — but a heavy site is slow on any hosting, and a light one can be quick on a good shared host.

A wait doesn’t sound bad until you’re the visitor. Imagine someone googling “emergency plumber near me” at 9pm — or “florist same-day delivery” on a Friday — and the first result they tap sits on a blank screen. They’re already on the next result. Google’s ranking systems take page experience into account, so a quick site helps, but it won’t get you to the top on its own: Google says it always tries to show the most relevant content, even when the page experience is poor.

The sites we build are made in advance as plain pages that carry very little code, so nothing has to be put together while your customer waits. You can test any site, including your own, at pagespeed.web.dev.

Security

Whatever the hosting, a lot of a website’s security comes down to keeping its own software up to date and its logins strong. Good shared hosts keep each account walled off from the others on the server, and the host patches the server itself. So ask two questions of any host: how are the sites on the server kept apart, and who keeps your website’s own software up to date?

Our managed AWS hosting comes with:

• Cloudflare in front of every site — its standard protection against floods of junk traffic (DDoS attacks), before that traffic reaches your site
• Nothing to patch — the site is static, with no plugins, no database and no server software for you to keep updated
• Properly configured HTTPS — the padlock in the address bar, with the certificate renewed automatically and its expiry checked every day

Reliability

Hosts often quote an uptime figure such as “99.9%” — which still allows nearly 9 hours offline a year. Nine hours could be the busiest Saturday of your year.

No host can honestly promise 100%, so the better question is what happens when something does go wrong. With ours, the site is static: there are no plugins or database behind the pages, so there are fewer moving parts. Your site and its certificate are checked every morning, and we’re alerted if the site is down. It’s a once-a-day check, not round-the-clock monitoring, so if you spot a problem first, ring or email us.

Backups and rolling back

Backups vary a lot from host to host, shared or managed. Before you sign up, ask how often they’re taken, how long they’re kept, who restores one, and whether that costs extra. The time to find out is before you need one.

With our managed AWS hosting, earlier versions of every file on your site are kept for 60 days, and we keep a separate copy of the site’s code too. If a change goes wrong, your site can be rolled back to how it was.

When shared hosting makes sense

Shared hosting is a good fit if:

• You, or someone you trust, are happy to keep the site up to date and make its changes
• Your site is simple and doesn’t change much
• You’re testing an idea and want to keep costs down
• You want the lowest monthly cost, and your budget can’t stretch beyond £10/month right now

When managed hosting is worth it

Consider managed hosting if any of these apply:

• Your website brings in enquiries, bookings, or sales, and you want a person to ring when something’s wrong
• You’d rather someone else made the changes and put things right when something goes wrong
• You run Google or Facebook ads and want the pages they land on looked after

The cost perspective

The price gap between shared and managed hosting is typically £15-65/month — roughly £180-780 a year. What that buys is the looking-after: someone making small changes, rolling back a mistake, checking the site every morning and answering the phone. If that saves you a few hours a month, or stops one enquiry going missing, it’s paid for itself.

Think of it as the difference between servicing your own van and having a garage look after it. Both keep you on the road. One costs less; the other saves you the time and the guesswork.

What we offer

Hosting comes with our website plan — £50 a month for the build and the hosting. Once all 24 payments are made, or if you’d like us to host a site on its own, Starter Managed Hosting is £20/month. Either way, it includes hosting on AWS with Cloudflare in front, the HTTPS padlock renewed automatically, 60 days of change history, a check on your site every morning, messages from your site’s enquiry form sent straight to your inbox, an info@ address forwarded to the inbox you already use, and small content updates (about 30 minutes of work a month). Your site is static, so there’s nothing for you to patch.

You also get support from the engineer who built and looks after your site, by email or phone — not a call centre reading from a script.

See what our hosting includes or get in touch to discuss your needs.

Frequently asked questions

Is shared hosting bad for small businesses?

No. Plenty of business websites run well on shared hosting at £3-10/month, especially when the host is good and someone keeps the site up to date. The host looks after the server; looking after the website itself is usually down to you or whoever built it. Managed hosting costs more because someone does that for you: making small changes, rolling back a mistake, checking the site every morning and answering the phone. Whether that's worth the £15-65/month difference depends on how much your business leans on the website.

What does AWS hosting actually mean?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services — Amazon's cloud computing platform. It runs Netflix, Airbnb, BBC iPlayer, Just Eat, and most apps you use day to day. Running on AWS doesn't make a website good on its own — how the site is built and looked after matters more. Managed AWS hosting means your website runs on that platform at a small-business price, with someone (us) handling the technical side so you don't have to learn cloud engineering.

How is managed AWS hosting different from shared hosting?

Shared hosting is the equivalent of renting a desk in a busy co-working space — your website shares one computer with many others, the host divides its power between you, and looking after the website itself is usually down to you. With our managed AWS hosting, your site is hosted on AWS with Cloudflare in front, the HTTPS padlock is renewed automatically, earlier versions of every file are kept for 60 days so a mistake can be rolled back, the site is checked every morning, and you get support from the engineer who built it.

Will my website really be slower on shared hosting?

Not necessarily. How quickly a page opens depends mostly on how the site is built — the size of its photos, how much code each page carries and how many add-ons it runs. A light site can be quick on a good shared host, and a heavy one is slow on any hosting. Speed still matters: people give up on pages that take too long, and Google's ranking systems take page experience into account, though Google says it always tries to show the most relevant content, even when the page experience is poor. You can test any site, including your own, at pagespeed.web.dev.

Can I move my site to another host if I leave?

With managed AWS hosting at GrantOps, yes — we hand over a full export of your website files and content, so you can take everything to another host. Most hosts let you take your files with you too, but how you get them out, and by when, varies. Always check the exit terms before signing up to any hosting plan.