Hosting is the ground your site lives on. Poorly chosen, it makes your site slow, sometimes unreachable, and can even get it hacked. Here's what to know before choosing.
1. Speed depends on the server, not just on you. Cheap shared hosting (50 MAD/month) splits resources with hundreds of sites. Your neighbor consumes everything, your site slows down. For a professional site, aim for quality hosting or a CDN.
2. Moroccan or international hosting? A server in Morocco (or Europe) reduces loading time for your Moroccan visitors. Reputed international hosts (Netlify, Vercel, OVH, Hostinger) offer excellent reliability. What matters: server proximity and host reputation.
3. SSL (HTTPS) is mandatory. The padlock reassures your customers and Google takes it into account. All our sites are delivered with a free SSL certificate included.
4. Backups. A good host backs up your site automatically (daily or weekly). Check that's actually the case — and test a restore once.
5. Support. When your site goes down on a Saturday night, who do you talk to? Favor responsive support (24/7 chat), and ideally a local contact who speaks your language.
6.How much does it cost? Between 30 and 150 MAD/month for decent hosting in Morocco. With us, hosting + domain + SSL + maintenance are included in our plans, and maintenance continues from 190 MAD/month after year one.
Our advice. Don't hunt the cheapest: hunt the most reliable. A site down on your peak day costs more than a whole year of hosting.
Also read
Get a free quote → ← Back to blogWhat hosting must guarantee, concretely
Three commitments matter more than the displayed price. Availability: your site must stay online, including at peak hours. Server response speed: a saturated machine slows even a perfectly optimized site. Support: when things break, the difference between decent and poor hosting comes down to the technical team's response time.
Price grids say nothing about these three points. Reviews and real tests say plenty.
The real cost of cheap hosting
The second year is the most common blind spot: many offers show a very low introductory price that doesn't renew.
The domain must stay in your name
It's the most important rule on this page. Register the domain in your name, with an e-mail address you own and will keep checking for years. A domain registered by a provider becomes very hard to recover if they leave or cease activity.
Same for hosting: you must hold the access, even if we configure the site.
Shared, VPS or dedicated: which suits which kind of site
| Typical hosting | For which site | Limit to know |
|---|---|---|
| Entry-level shared hosting | A few-page showcase website, moderate traffic | Neighborhood: another business on the same server can slow yours. |
| Quality shared hosting | Showcase website with booking formula, steady traffic | The renewal rate, often above the introductory price. |
| VPS | Online store, catalog, sustained traffic | Requires technical administration, or a managed service |
| Dedicated server | Traffic spike, business application | Cost and upkeep unlike anything a presentation site requires |
For most businesses we support, quality shared hosting is largely enough. A VPS mainly justifies itself by the need to control configuration, not visitor volume.
Questions to ask before paying
- What's the renewal price for years two and three?
- Is there automatic backup, and how often?
- Does support reply in French or English, via which channel, with what announced lead time?
- What if I exceed the plan's resources?
- Can I retrieve a full copy of my files and database?
- Where are servers located, and is the HTTPS certificate included?
Answers to these six questions distinguish two identically priced hosts. On a price grid alone, nothing separates them.
Taking back control of your access
Two documents are enough to avoid getting locked out: the list of accesses — domain registrar, hosting, site admin account — and the e-mail tied to each. This address must be an inbox you actually check, and one that will survive someone's departure or the end of a contract.
The principle is simple: you can delegate configuration, never ownership of access.
Backups: the check that matters
A backup really exists the day it has been restored at least once. Until the operation has been tried, you know neither whether the file is complete, nor whether it's readable, nor how fast it comes back.
Verification happens on a test environment, never on the production site. Once a year suffices for a showcase, more often for a shop where each down day means lost orders.
