Hosting or VPS: what to choose
Shared hosting fits most presentation sites and small shops: cheap, maintained by the provider, zero administration. A VPS earns its keep when the project needs dedicated resources, custom software, isolation or heavy mail traffic — and when its admin exists (that is us). The honest math we do at the start: the real load of your site, growth plans, and the admin hours the option implies. We often move clients from an overloaded hosting to a modest VPS for the price of two coffees a month — and often talk clients out of an unnecessary VPS they were sold by fear, not by numbers.
What we set up
The working baseline: the panel (ISPmanager or equivalents) with sane limits; PHP version and extensions matched to your CMS; SSL installed with auto-renewal; corporate mail — mailboxes, MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC, so letters reach the inbox instead of spam; automatic backups on schedule, stored outside the server and periodically test-restored; a firewall closed to what is needed and brute-force protection on every door; monitoring with alerts to both our phones. The site is deployed and checked — forms send, mail leaves, pages load — and you receive a one-page server passport with credentials, settings and the restore procedure.
Security is not an option
An unconfigured server gets scanned within hours of going live: bots try SSH passwords, admin panels, known CMS holes. Our baseline closes the usual doors: key-based SSH instead of passwords, fail2ban locks, a firewall with default-deny, services updated on a schedule, separate accounts instead of one shared root. For CMS sites we add the application layer: admin paths protected, file permissions correct, automatic security updates where the CMS allows them. None of this is exotic — it is the difference between a server that quietly serves for years and one that becomes a spam relay in March.
Backups: the insurance that must work
A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a backup. We set up automatic copies on a schedule matched to how often the site changes — daily for shops, weekly-plus-daily for content sites — stored on a separate storage the server itself cannot wipe (ransomware and hacks cannot destroy what they cannot reach), with retention across weeks. And the part everyone skips: a control restore on a test copy, so the day something breaks you restore in minutes, not discover the archive was empty. Restores are drilled as part of the setup, not sold as an extra.
Cost and timelines
Shared hosting setup — from 5 000 RUB, 1 day: domain, SSL, mail, backups, CMS. A VPS under key — from 15 000 RUB, 1–2 days: OS, panel, stack, protection, backups, monitoring. A VPS for 1C exchange and integrations — from 25 000 RUB with exchange tests. Migration from your current hosting — from 5 000 RUB (zero downtime, with a rollback plan). Subscription administration — from 5 000 RUB/mo: updates, backup checks, alert response. The VPS tariff itself runs 400–2 500 RUB/mo depending on power; we help choose the provider without overpaying.
Why the server is set up at ZXY
We administer servers for the sites we build — the same team, the same phone number — so "the hosting guys say it is the developers' fault" cannot happen here. Our baseline is a checklist refined over years of breakages we have seen, not a generic hardening article. Monitoring alerts both sides, and a night crash is met by an engineer, not by a morning surprise. And everything is documented: a server passport, restore procedures, credentials vault — so the infrastructure survives staff changes, contractor changes and, honestly, us being hit by a bus.
