Buying Advice
How to choose: hosting for side projects
Written for builders with three ideas live and two more in a notes app — the criteria that matter, the trap to avoid, and where we'd honestly point you.
The short answer
Our verdict, upfront: one Pro plan hosting the whole portfolio of experiments — flat cost, instant new-project setup, and the breakout project upgrades alone.
The reasoning, the criteria and the trap to avoid are below — written for builders with three ideas live and two more in a notes app, without the affiliate-table theatre this topic usually attracts.
Free
Site migration
24/7
Real-person support
Daily
Automatic backups
$0
Setup fees
This guide is written for builders with three ideas live and two more in a notes app. If that's you, the decision has a right answer — it just isn't the one the comparison-table industry is paid to give you.
One market fact frames everything here: side projects follow a power law — most idle, one takes off — which argues for flat-rate hosting for the many and dedicated resources only for the winner.
The criteria that actually decide it
Strip away the feature-table padding and a handful of criteria decide this choice:
Multi-site capacity so each experiment gets its own home cheaply.
Low idle cost — projects that sleep shouldn't bill like projects that work.
Quick setup, because side-project momentum dies in configuration.
An upgrade path for the one project that unexpectedly works.
The trap most buyers walk into
Per-project platform fees that turn five experiments into a phone bill.
The pattern survives because its cost lands later — at renewal, at migration, or at the worst possible moment of growth. The antidote is boring arithmetic: total cost over two or three years, with every 'extra' you'd actually need included.
The verdict
One Pro plan hosting the whole portfolio of experiments — flat cost, instant new-project setup, and the breakout project upgrades alone.
On our platform that maps to the Pro plan — with free SSL, migration and email included, flat renewals, and an upgrade path that means the choice never has to be re-made from scratch.
Daily automatic backups with one-click restores come with every plan.
Test before you trust
Run the same tests on us as on anyone: message support before paying and see who answers, compare the renewal price to the signup price, read the refund terms end to end, and look the company up — ours is Bohzo Ltd, registered in England and Wales, and the record is public.
Then let usage decide: a fortnight of real use inside the money-back window tells you more than every review site combined — and switching costs you nothing but the time to open a migration ticket.
The incentive behind this guide
Most 'best hosting' content is paid ranking. Ours has a simpler incentive: we recommend the setup we'd sell you anyway, and we say so — which frees the rest of the page to be actually useful.
Support is answered by real people around the clock — including the questions other hosts call out of scope.
- Criteria you can test yourself
- Renewal prices printed, not footnoted
- Free migration makes trials painless
- A refund policy without traps
Why HostingAlly
What you get with every plan
A real upgrade ladder
Shared to VPS to dedicated under one roof — the choice you make today never boxes you in.
The essentials included
SSL, migration, backups and email ship with every plan instead of appearing at checkout as extras.
Flat, honest pricing
The signup price is the renewal price — the comparison that matters is the one we win by default.
Verifiable company
Bohzo Ltd, registered in England and Wales — a host you can look up before you trust.
A refund policy without a gauntlet
If it doesn't fit, leaving is a request — which is exactly why we're comfortable being tested.
Support you can pre-test
Ask us something hard before you pay — pre-sales behaviour is the ceiling of post-sales support.
Getting Started
How to get going
- 1
Define the requirement in one sentence
One honest sentence about the workload beats an afternoon of feature-table comparison — write it before shopping.
- 2
Price year two, not year one
Teaser rates are this market's favourite trick — compare hosts on what year two costs and the field reorders itself instantly.
- 3
Test inside the refund window
Sign up, migrate a real site free, and use it properly for a fortnight — the daily experience is the product, and the window makes testing it free.
Included
What's covered on our plans
- Per-site PHP version selection
- LiteSpeed server-level caching
- 99.9% uptime commitment, monitored around the clock
- No setup fees, ever
- SSH, Git and Composer access on developer-friendly plans
- Daily automatic backups with self-service restores
- Free website migration handled by our team
- 24/7 support from real people
- Renewal prices that match signup prices
- Free SSL certificate on every plan, renewed automatically
FAQ
Your questions, answered
What's the cheapest way to run five small projects?
One multi-site plan — subdomains or parked domains per project, shared resources across the quiet many. Five platform subscriptions would cost multiples for less control.
What happens when one project takes off?
Move just that one — to a bigger plan or a VPS — while the others stay put. Migration between our plans is an internal move, not a replatforming.
Are backups included, and can I restore them myself?
Daily automatic backups are standard, restorable from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at 3am without a ticket if that's when you need it. For extra cover, you're welcome to run your own offsite copies alongside.
Can I host more than one website on a plan?
On the Pro tier and above, yes — multiple sites with their own domains, email and SSL under one account. If the extra sites belong to clients rather than you, reseller hosting gives each one proper isolation instead.
Do prices go up at renewal?
No — the price you sign up at is the price you renew at. We don't run teaser-rate economics, so there's no year-two ambush to plan around, and your bookkeeping can rely on the number staying put.
Is SSL really included at no cost?
On every plan, with no exceptions — certificates are issued automatically when your domain points to us and renew themselves before expiry. The encryption is identical to paid DV certificates; paid tiers exist only for wildcard convenience or organisation-level validation.
Which control panel do you provide?
cPanel — the industry standard, which means every tutorial on the internet matches your screen, your backups restore anywhere cPanel runs, and skills learned here transfer for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin options exist on specific plans for those who prefer them.
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Free SSL, free migration, honest renewals and 24/7 human support. That's the whole pitch.
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