3rd Sep 2025
What do you look for in a web hosting partner? Like any relationship, it’s important to notice those green flags that indicate you’ll have a positive experience.
Here are some real-life messages that we’ve received from our clients. They show those green flags perfectly:
Customers stay with them
“The best part of hosting with you was your help with staging my site way back when… now it has had 1000s views and I’m still so happy with your service.”
Besma – Curiously Conscious
Customers endorse them
“I've been using Green Hosting for several years now and always recommend it to friends and contacts who are looking for an environmentally friendly web hosting platform.”
Melissa – The Ocean Writer
Customers return to them
“As an ethical sales agency and community, we want to work with ethical suppliers so when we discovered Green Hosting four years ago we were delighted. When we launched a new sales community hub recently we went no further than to secure our second hosting package with Green Hosting.”
Corinne – Ethical Sales
Your values align
“Just to stay how much we appreciate having an ethical provider hosting our web site at green-action-elt.uk. It’s great to know our web site sits on ethical foundations while we get on with our work promoting environmental sustainability in English Language Teaching.”
Chris – Green Action ELT
Cost effective services
“The price for the hosting is brilliant and I'm glad that the company supports organisations doing work to make the world a better place. I couldn't recommend their services more highly.”
Amy – Sustainable and Social
Pop over to our Clients page to see more positive testimonials ...
16th Jul 2025
Every so often, web hosting clients contact us at the end of their tether. They’ve either hired someone to create their website or made it themselves. At first it seemed fine but a year or so down the line, they’re having problems. Those problems usually relate to the speed and stability of their website. It’s slow to load or ‘falls over’ at the click of a link or they’re seeing warning messages about their site’s poor health.
Not being able to use your website and not having a seemingly straightforward fix is extremely frustrating and concerning. And, aside from the worry and disruption to the website owner, there are environmental and security implications for the website too.
After trying to get the issue resolved by themselves or by their designer (and sometimes being told that the hosting is the problem. Spoiler alert: It’s not the hosting!) the client may ask us if we can help.
A quick assessment often brings up 3 problems would have been incredibly easy to build into the management of the website from the start. Unravelling the mess they create later is time-consuming and can be costly:
Setting these three habits in place at the start of your website's life can keep it cleaner and healthier much longer into the future.
19th Jun 2025
By choosing Green Hosting, our clients have taken an essential step in their digital lives towards reducing their negative environmental impact. Using services like ours, which are powered by renewable energy, means that their website is not contributing to carbon emissions as fossil fuel powered web hosting does. But what about other aspects of our lives?
When we talk about sustainability, we often focus on physical waste, energy-efficient devices or greener transportation. However, as we live increasingly in the digital world, we need to give our online habits more attention.
While choosing a green web host is a great starting point, true digital sustainability goes much deeper. From video consumption to email overload, every online action has a carbon cost. Here are several impactful ways to make your digital life more sustainable, beyond hosting.
Video is great, it is a really useful way of communicating in an engaging, accessible and human way. Video content is also the biggest data guzzler on the internet. Not taking into account video streaming for entertainment, we’ll focus on work-based video use here, this still requires significant server power and energy, much of it still sourced from fossil fuels.
What you can do:
Each social media post, in whatever form, is stored on servers that consume energy around the clock. When billions of users post constantly, the cumulative environmental cost adds up fast.
To avoid using valuable resources and creating digital waste, consider these things before posting:
Quality over quantity not only helps the environment, it can lead to more meaningful engagement, too.
Inefficient websites packed with bloated scripts, oversized images and unnecessary video or animations use more hosting bandwidth and disk space, increasing load on both the servers and user devices as well as higher power demands on data centres.
Here are some sustainable site design tips:
Remember that a faster, leaner website isn’t just better for the planet it’s better for your users. It is vital to remember that we are designing for humans. Let’s make sure our web visitors are not left waiting for slow loading pages and their data isn’t being used up by downloading excessive file sizes.
Inbox overload isn’t just a mental clutter, it’s an environmental one too. Each email stored translates to the use of physical space and electricity, including the millions of unnecessary marketing emails we receive daily.
Simple steps to clean up:
It might feel like a daunting task if e-mails have built up over time but clearing that space will help it all become more manageable in the future.
Some online services and tools are built with sustainability in mind. Whether it’s a CMS plugin that optimizes performance or a platform powered by renewable energy, choosing eco-conscious technology providers amplifies your impact.
Look for:
Choosing technology carefully, with environmental goals in mind is a powerful way to align your digital life with your values.
Digital sustainability isn’t about abandoning the internet but it is about using it in a smarter way. From the content we consume and share, to the tools we use and the digital debris we accumulate, every action online has an environmental impact.
Going beyond choosing green hosting to embrace broader digital responsibility is great for the planet as well as your productivity, online presence and how you can make a difference in a meaningful way.
8th May 2025
“…I really appreciate the guidance you’ve given me, particularly as this is my first website and there are a lot of decisions to be made…. and you’ve taken the time to explain everything in a way that makes sense and has left me feeling confident editing and adding to my site going forward.”
Check out the full client testimonial at the end of this article.
A new website starter serviceThis year, we have seen a growing number of clients seeking guidance on how to get started with their websites. Most small businesses and individuals want a professional online presence that reflects the quality of their service or product. However, they often find themselves in an 'in-between' position: they want to keep costs down and learn to manage their own websites, but the initial setup and build can feel overwhelming.
At this stage it can be tempting to turn to a website builder service that promises ease and simplicity. But there are many more benefits that you can gain by hiring a professional web designer to get you started.
Because of recent demand, we are now offering the creation of a small starter website as a service. Let us tell you about some of the key benefits.
Starting up involves installing and configuring your website software, applying the necessary security features, actioning accessibility, creating a responsive design and adding structural features that won’t very often change. This is the technically most difficult stage of a website’s life and done correctly will only need to be carried out once for quite a few years. The question is, why take time out of your business to learn this step when we could do it for you?
Once your starter website is built you don’t need to worry about unexpected costs. Whereas website builder services typically increase monthly costs with the addition of simple features. Additionally, once your website is created on a website builder platform it is locked into that service’s hosting and can’t be moved elsewhere. A website at our Green Hosting isn’t only powered by renewable electricity but it is also ‘moveable’ to an alternative hosting provider if you wish to do that at a later stage.
Having a web designer support you in taking your website forward after the initial launch is incredibly valuable. We guide you through good practice, content preparation and website editing so that your website can stay as fresh and professional as it did at initial launch.
Web design is so much more than placing words and pictures on a screen. Use our expertise of over 20 years building more complex websites to help you solve your initial puzzles. This may be around navigation and content structure, look and feel, choice of software, meeting required legislation and so on. You don’t know what you don’t know, right? It’s our job to know.
Do you know about all the responsibilities and legal requirements that come with owning a website? We can guide you when it comes to accessibility, usability, sustainability, security and privacy.
One of our recent starter website clients sums up this service so beautifully and encapsulates everything we aim to achieve:
"I love what you do, your ethics and your approach to the work - the process has been fantastic. From initial ideas to the final published site, you’ve kept me informed at every step, making it clear what was happening and when. I really appreciate the guidance you’ve given me, particularly as this is my first website and there are a lot of decisions to be made. I also appreciate your patience - whilst I’m broadly tech-savvy, there’s so much more to building a website than you first think, and you’ve taken the time to explain everything in a way that makes sense and has left me feeling confident editing and adding to my site going forward.
I’m blown away by the finished result. It looks far smarter and more professional than I would have achieved by myself or with a website builder, and you’ve given me something that’s such a great fit, but that I would never have arrived at alone. For the service, the outcome and the skills I’ve gained for the future - the price is incredibly competitive too.
Thank you 😊"
If this article resonates with you, if you’re looking to get started with a professional website but are not sure how, then get in touch with us at [email protected].
1st May 2025
At the end of a recent video call with one of our web design clients, they signed off by saying, "Thanks for being human!"
That simple comment meant a lot. It’s exactly the kind of thing we look for in a company and it’s something we've always made a conscious effort to bring to our work. We also value this quality in our clients, those who communicate openly and naturally, without any assumptions about how to talk to "I.T. people."
Positive feedback about our approach and process is just as meaningful as praise for the finished website. That's because genuine, human interaction between collaborators is what leads to the best results. In fact, it's such a vital part of any project that we thought it was worth breaking down exactly why 'being human' matters so much in a web design partnership.
Human-centred design goes together with human-centred communication
We don't expect clients to know the lexicon of web development or UX (user experience) - but they do know their aims, why they need a website, their stakeholders and their own resources. These are the things we ask them about. Speaking in clear language encourages better discussion and more useful feedback. This sets the tone for the whole design process, which is about people, not pixels.
Approachability builds trust
Clients may understandably feel vulnerable when commissioning a website. It can be a big investment tied to their business or personal brand. Being approachable and providing gentle leadership helps reduce anxiety and creates a safe space for questions and honest input. Trust and confidence in the web developer leads to a smoother project process that's enjoyable for everyone.
Translating tech into tangible outcomes
Clients shouldn't have to care about the technical details of their website. They care about their goals and calls to action their web users should take, such as accessing support, finding information, booking events, buying a product and so on. Stripping away the tech speak allows us to focus on discussions about outcomes and because we choose to work with organisations and individuals who are making a positive difference, their outcomes are all the more important to us.
How we feel makes all the difference
We want clients to come away from a web development project feeling respected, heard and understood and we want to feel that way too. Positive experiences like this are more likely to lead to long-term working relationships and potentially more opportunities for both parties.
Green Hosting works handsomely with:
Auto-installer now available on all accounts
