We host all CMS websites: why and the benefits

Why do you have to host the website?

This is quite a common question, less so than in the past, but still quite common nonetheless. Most of the time the question is asked these days not so much because it's a significant issue but just to tick the box to understand why or simply out of curiosity.

In the past it was more of a major concern for clients, although most of the time the points below were still convincing and compelling enough to make them realise it is better that we host the website, and it steadily becoming less of an issue to all clients (as indeed should be the case).

In fact, particularly with the move towards the cloud it is becoming more and more common for "Software as a Service" (SaaS) products (such as ours) to provide all the hosting, the main reason being that the client doesn't have to worry about any of the hosting or infrastructure, they can simply focus on adding content into the system provided by the SaaS product and otherwise get on with running their business.

There are also (more recently) other cloud-based products offering "Platform as a Service" (PaaS), "Infrastructure as a Service" (IaaS) and others besides, the whole point being to take away from you having to worry about the underlying systems and let you focus on just doing the one thing you need to do (and that you know, that you're good at and really the thing you enjoy doing) and let other experts worry about their areas of specialism.

So let me list out all the main reasons why it is better that we host your website:

1. We have invested a great deal of time, money and effort to have the best possible hosting infrastructure for all the sites that use Webi CMS - so as touched on above, we look after all of the underlying hosting, server maintenance, patches, upgrades, etc, so you simply don't need to think about or worry about any of this;
2. Backups, security, uptime, all are generally better in this scenario for the same reason as above that due to the economies of scale of running the system for many clients, we can invest more time and effort into the system and we clearly have a huge responsibility to ensure the system will be online all the time given it is being used by thousands of users;
3. There is only ever one version of the system, so you don't need to worry about which version you are running, you don't need to worry about updating your copy of the system and whether it would cause any errors or problems to your website;
4. Related to the above point, we are constantly updating and improving the system so all the latest changes and extra new features we add, you get the benefit of - as an example, at the time of writing this blog post we are nearly finished with a new form builder tool that will be added to the system allowing you to create and edit forms directly in the system - if you were running a separate copy of the system then you wouldn't have this automatically added into your version of the system (without at least downloading, replacing and testing a new version of the system, or worse you might also have to pay for each upgraded version);
5. If there are any problems with the system, again because there is just one version it is very easy for us to spot the same problem, fix it and update the system in one place and all clients would immediately have that problem fixed;
6. The efficiency of running and maintaining just one copy of the system means we can pass on the cost saving in the form of lower fees and getting improvements continually added to the system more quickly;
7. As we look after your website for you on our servers (as well as you using the web based CMS system on our servers), we can very quickly get access to your website to check any problems reported or more commonly to develop the site for you further - we are strong advocates of building simple websites and with experience and feedback from customers, to then develop the website further. Hosting the site for you means we have immediate access to add functionality in a trusted environment where we know exactly how all the code and system will function.

There are undoubtedly other reasons too, but hopefully this list is more than enough to have convinced you of the merits of the SaaS and hosted CMS approach. You're more than welcome to leave comments or contact us to discuss any of the above further.