Web Hosting for PR Agencies

Short answer: an agency site has two hosting requirements most professional firms do not. It has to survive a sudden surge when your own or a client’s story lands, and it has to send a lot of outbound email that reliably reaches journalists. Caching, a CDN and properly configured authentication records matter more than raw server power.

Looking for plans rather than guidance? Our web hosting plans start at £39 a year and renew at £39, and our multi-site plans suit agencies hosting client sites alongside their own.

Email deliverability is your biggest technical risk

You send more outbound email than almost any other kind of small business, much of it to people who have never heard from you before. That is precisely the profile spam filters are built to catch.

Three things to get right, in order of importance:

Authentication records. SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain are what tell receiving servers your mail is legitimate. Without them, a meaningful proportion of your pitches never reach an inbox and you have no way of knowing. Our guide to SPF, DKIM and DMARC explains what each does and how to set them up.

Do not send volume outreach from your web server. Shared hosting is not built for bulk sending and doing it risks your domain reputation and the server’s. Use a proper email platform for anything sent to a list, and keep your web hosting for the website.

Mailboxes on your own domain, one per person. Journalists respond better to a named human than to a shared info@ address. Our email hosting plans include unlimited mailboxes with 10GB each, so a growing team does not mean a growing bill. That matters here because per-user pricing is what pushes agencies towards fewer, shared addresses.

Our comparison of business email hosting against Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 covers how the cost diverges as headcount grows.

Plan for the spike, because it is the moment that matters

Agency traffic is not steady. It jumps when you win an award, when a campaign you ran gets picked up, when you publish something that circulates, or when a client’s story breaks and people come looking for who handled it.

Those windows are short and unrepeatable, and the site going slow in one of them is a poor advertisement for a communications firm.

Caching does most of the work, since everyone arriving is reading the same page. Have page caching and a CDN configured before you need them. Resize images before uploading, since a case study page carrying ten unoptimised photographs is where a plan buckles. Our plain English guide to Core Web Vitals covers how load speed is measured.

Hosting client sites: decide deliberately

Many agencies drift into hosting client websites because a client asked and it seemed easier than saying no. That is a service with obligations attached, and it is worth entering on purpose.

What it commits you to: uptime someone will hold you accountable for, WordPress and plugin updates across several sites, SSL renewals, backups you can actually restore from, and a support expectation when something breaks at nine on a Monday.

If you do it, a multi-site plan is the sensible structure. It keeps sites technically separate, gives you one account and one bill, and means a problem on one site does not affect the others. Our multi-site plans are built for exactly this, and our WordPress security checklist is the baseline you should be applying to every site you hold.

If you would rather not take it on, resell or refer instead. There is no obligation to become a hosting company because a client asked.

Media assets and storage

If you host press materials, image libraries or downloadable assets for clients, storage grows faster than you expect and image files are large.

Two practical points. Keep press-ready images available at usable resolution, since a journalist who cannot get a printable file will use someone else’s story. But serve web versions on the page itself, not the print originals, or your media centre will be the slowest part of the site.

Video belongs on a specialist platform rather than your own server, so it adapts to the viewer’s connection instead of buffering.

Your enquiry form is carrying new business

A silently failing contact form is the most expensive hosting fault a small firm can have. The form submits, the visitor sees a confirmation, the email never arrives.

It happens because WordPress sends mail through PHP by default, which is frequently filtered. Send it through authenticated SMTP, deliver to an address someone monitors daily rather than a founder’s inbox, and test it monthly from a different device. Our guide to contact forms not sending emails covers the causes.

Client confidentiality has hosting consequences

Agencies hold embargoed announcements, draft statements, crisis materials and commercially sensitive briefs. Some of that will pass through the website if you are not careful about it.

Practical position: free SSL as standard, which any decent plan includes. Do not use an unlisted URL as a substitute for access control, because unlisted pages get indexed and shared. If you need a client-facing area for materials, use a proper authenticated service rather than a WordPress page with an obscure address.

And do not let form submissions containing client detail accumulate indefinitely in your WordPress database, which most form plugins do by default.

Backups, and the client-site multiplier

For your own site, daily backups are about undoing ordinary mistakes. If you hold client sites, they are about your professional exposure, since a client losing their site while you were hosting it is a considerably worse conversation.

Check backups are daily, retained for weeks rather than days, stored off the server, and that you have actually restored one before you needed to.

What plan you actually need

Your own site only: entry-level shared hosting with good caching and a CDN. SSD storage, free SSL, daily backups, mailboxes on your own domain. Around £39 a year.

Hosting client sites: a multi-site plan, sized to the number of sites and their traffic.

Heavy media centre or campaign microsites: more storage, and the next tier up for PHP memory if any of them run shops or membership areas. Our guide to scaling without enterprise costs covers the middle ground.

Check the renewal price rather than the introductory rate, particularly if you are recharging hosting to clients, since a rate that doubles in year two is an awkward invoice to explain. Our guide to cheap web hosting in the UK covers what should be standard.

Frequently asked questions

Why do our press releases go to spam?

Usually missing or incorrect SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, or sending volume outreach from a shared web server instead of a proper email platform.

Can we send our media list from our web hosting?

You should not. Shared hosting is not built for bulk sending and it risks your domain reputation. Use a dedicated email platform for lists.

Should we host our clients’ websites?

Only deliberately. It commits you to uptime, updates, backups and support. If you do, use a multi-site plan so the sites stay separate under one account.

Will our site cope if a campaign goes viral?

With page caching and a CDN, usually yes, since everyone requests the same cached page. Without caching, a small plan will struggle in exactly the window that mattered.

How many mailboxes will we need to pay for?

Depends on the provider. Per-user pricing gets expensive as an agency grows; our plans include unlimited mailboxes on your domain instead.

Explore more

Our guide to web hosting for professional services covers the requirements shared across professional firms, and our WordPress security checklist is the baseline if you hold client sites.

Our multi-site plans are the place to start if you host for clients, and there is a free trial if you want to test performance first.