What is web hosting?
Web hosting is space on a computer that stays switched on and connected, holding your website's files and sending them to anyone who opens your address. The domain is the address; hosting is the premises behind it. It is rented monthly or yearly, and when the rent stops the site goes dark.
Why it matters to a shop
Every route you hand a customer ends at the host's machine: the link in your Instagram bio, the QR code on the table, the button on your Google listing. If the host is slow, the person tapping it at eleven at night on mobile data watches a white screen for four seconds and goes back to the search results — and you never find out it happened. This is also where a website's real running cost sits, and it is rent rather than a purchase: it recurs, and the site is online only for as long as it is paid. When you publish with Naratake you are given a hosting address, and that is the machine your site is served from.
Three things to check before you pay
- Ask what the price includes. An HTTPS certificate, daily backups and security updates should be part of the plan; if any of them is a separate line item, add it into the real monthly cost before you compare.
- Test the speed on a phone, standing outside on mobile data rather than on the shop wifi. That is the connection your customers are actually on.
- Ask how you would get the site out again — whether you can take a copy of the content and of the source code with you. Ours is in writing: Storefront Pro downloads the site's complete source, and a real export is public at github.com/ctingyi404-cloud/naratake-export-example. Ask any host the same question before you commit, not on the day you want to move.
Common mistake: Treating hosting as a one-off purchase — it is rent, and the day a renewal is missed the site disappears from the internet, even though the domain and all your work still exist.