Managed App Hosting vs. Cheap Web Hosting: What Austin Businesses Actually Need

If you search for "web hosting in Austin," you'll find plans from a few dollars a month. For a simple brochure website, that's often all you need. But if your business runs on a custom web app or a mobile app backend, a booking system, a customer portal, an internal tool or a SaaS product, cheap hosting can cost you far more than it saves.

Here's the difference, and how to tell which one you need.

What cheap web hosting is built for

Budget "shared hosting" puts hundreds of websites on the same server. It's designed for:

• Simple websites with a few pages
• WordPress blogs and brochure sites
• Low, predictable traffic

You get a control panel and a server to put files on. Everything else, from updates and backups to security and fixing things when they break, is your job.

Why custom apps outgrow it

A custom app isn't a set of pages. It's software with a database, user accounts, payments, emails and background jobs. That changes what hosting has to do:

• Your data matters. Losing a day of orders, bookings or customer records isn't an inconvenience; it's a business problem. You need daily backups stored somewhere else, and a tested way to restore them.
• Updates can't wait. The operating system, runtime and libraries your app depends on get security fixes every month. On shared hosting, nobody applies them for you.
• Someone has to notice when it breaks. If your app goes down at 2 a.m., you want to find out from an alert, not from an angry customer.
• Neighbors slow you down. On shared servers, another site's traffic spike becomes your slowdown.
• Small changes still need a developer. A new field on a form, a fix to an email, a report your team asked for. Cheap hosting gives you a server, not a person.

What managed app hosting includes

Managed app hosting means your app runs on its own server that someone looks after for you. With our plans, that includes:

• A managed server set up, tuned and sized for your app's traffic
• Daily off-site backups of your database
• Monitoring and alerts around the clock, so problems get fixed fast
• Security updates applied on a schedule, before they become problems
• Domain and SSL handled, with HTTPS certificates renewed automatically
• A developer on call, with monthly hours for changes and small features on higher plans

You focus on your business. We keep the app online, backed up, secure and up to date.

A quick way to decide

A simple rule: if losing a day of data or a day of uptime would hurt your business, you need managed hosting.

What does it cost?

Budget hosting costs a few dollars a month because it covers the server and nothing else. Managed app hosting costs more because it includes the work: backups, monitoring, updates and a developer when you need one. Our plans start at $99/month, billed monthly or yearly, and you can cancel anytime.

Compare that with the alternative: paying a developer by the hour every time something breaks, or finding out your backups never worked on the day you need them.

Already have an app hosted somewhere else?

You don't need to have built your app with us. For an existing app, we review the code and current setup first, recommend the right plan, and move it over with minimal downtime.

Local, with nationwide support

We're based in Austin, Texas, and host apps for businesses across Texas and the US. You work directly with the person maintaining your app, not a support queue.

See managed app hosting plans →

Not sure which plan fits? Tell us about your app and we'll recommend one.