Website hosting for Des Moines businesses
The hosting account is opened in your name, under your billing, at a host you could have chosen yourself. We manage it. We do not resell it, and we make nothing on it.
Since 2011 · Account in your name · No markup · Veteran-owned
Why whose name the hosting account is in matters
It is the single detail that decides how easy it is to leave.
If the invoice comes from the company that built your site rather than from a hosting company, you are not a hosting customer — you are a reseller’s customer, at a price they chose.
No control panel, no file access, no way to take a copy. Whether that is deliberate or just never set up, the effect is the same: your website lives somewhere you cannot reach.
A migration has to be negotiated, scheduled and sometimes paid for. The awkwardness is the product. Plenty of hosting arrangements are held together by nothing else.
The hosting is inside a bundle with maintenance and support, so there is no line to compare against what the same plan sells for publicly.
What we actually manage on your website hosting
You hold the account. We do the work on it.
- Choosing and setting up the host, sized to what your site actually needs
- The account opened in your name, under your billing, with your login
- SSL installed and renewal watched, so it never lapses into a browser warning
- Off-server backups on a schedule, with restores tested rather than assumed
- Uptime monitoring, so a site being down is something we notice first
- Server-side speed: caching, compression and image delivery
- DNS and domain records set up and documented — including business email, if you want it
- Dealing with the host on your behalf when something needs escalating
The hosting account is in your name, not ours
This is the whole argument, so it goes first rather than last.
When we set up hosting, the account is opened in your business name, with your billing details and a login you hold. You can sign in without asking us. You can see the invoice the host sends. You can take a copy of the entire site whenever you feel like it, and you can change the password and lock us out this afternoon if you want to.
We hold access to manage it, the same way an accountant has access to a ledger they do not own. That is the whole relationship. There is no arrangement in which your website lives somewhere you cannot reach, and no version of leaving that requires a migration to be negotiated — because there is nothing to migrate. You remove our login.
Hosting, maintenance and security are three different things
Routinely sold as one, which makes the invoice harder to question.
Hosting is where the site lives — the server, uptime, SSL, backups and how fast it responds. That is this page.
Maintenance is what gets done to the site over time — updates applied and checked, forms tested, content edited. It is a service performed on a schedule, not a place.
Security is mostly a consequence of the first two being done properly, plus decisions made at build time: fewer plugins, one account per person, least privilege.
They are worth separating because you can buy them separately, and from different people. Hosting you buy directly at cost. Maintenance you can buy from us, from somebody else, or handle in-house. Bundling all three into one number is convenient for whoever is billing you, and it is the reason most people cannot answer what their hosting costs.
What our website hosting does not include
Short, because the offer is short.
- Reselling you mailboxes at a markup — business email is bought in your own name, and we set it up
- Reselling you a hosting plan at a markup, which is the point of the whole page
- Enterprise infrastructure, load balancing or multi-region hosting
- Hosting for a site we cannot maintain, or one built on a platform we do not work in
- Maintenance and content edits, which are a separate service
- The hosting and domain fees themselves, which you pay the host and registrar directly
Every site is built by Elisabeth Samuels and the Salterra team — a company building websites since 2011. Not a reseller, not an offshore queue. The same person who scopes your project writes the pages and hands over the logins.
Tell us who hosts you and we will tell you what that plan normally costs and whether you are being marked up. No obligation, and often the answer is that you are fine where you are.
What website hosting costs, and what we make on it
Both halves of that sentence, because the second is the unusual one.
Hosting and domain fees are yours and paid directly to the host and the registrar — typically a few dollars a month and around $15 a year for the domain. You will see those invoices because they come to you.
We make nothing on it. No markup, no commission, no referral fee, no reseller margin. That is deliberate: if we profited from you staying, every piece of advice we gave about your hosting would be worth slightly less. It is also the easiest claim on this site to check — the invoice comes from the host, at the host’s published price, so you can verify it yourself without asking us anything.
What moves the number
- What the site actually needs — a brochure site and a busy store want different plans, and we will not size you up to something you do not need
- Whether you already have hosting worth keeping — often you do, and moving would cost you money for no benefit
- The domain registrar, which is normally around $15 a year and is not worth optimizing
- Whether you want maintenance alongside it, which is a separate service and a separate figure
Frequently asked questions about website hosting in Des Moines
What does website hosting cost in Des Moines?
Typically a few dollars a month, plus around $15 a year for the domain, paid to the host and registrar directly. Those invoices come to you at the published price, so you can check the figure yourself.
Whose name is the hosting account in?
Yours. Your business name, your billing details, your login, at a host you could have chosen yourself. We hold access to manage it — we do not own it, and you can change the password and remove us this afternoon if you want to.
Do you make money on my hosting?
No. No markup, no commission, no referral fee. We think advice about your hosting is worth less if we profit from the answer. It is also the easiest claim on this site to check: the invoice comes from the host at the host’s published price.
What happens to my site if I stop working with you?
Nothing at all. The account is already yours, so there is no migration to negotiate and no file we hold back. You remove our login and the site carries on exactly as it was.
How often is the site backed up, and can it be restored?
On a schedule, and off the server — a backup on the machine you would lose is not a backup. And yes, restores are tested rather than assumed, because a backup nobody has ever restored is a belief rather than a backup.
Do you provide business email?
We set it up, and you own it. The mailboxes are bought in your own name — from your host, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 — at their published price, and we configure the DNS and get it working alongside the site when we set the hosting up. What we do not do is resell you mailboxes at a markup, which is the same rule as the hosting itself.
What is the difference between hosting, maintenance and security?
Hosting is where the site lives — server, uptime, SSL, backups, speed. Maintenance is what gets done to it over time — updates, testing, edits. Security is mostly a consequence of the other two being done properly. They get sold as one bundle because that makes the invoice harder to question; they are worth buying separately.
Tell us what you sell. Get your number.
Send us what your business does and roughly how many pages you think you need. You will get the number and a timeline in writing.
Takes about a minute. No call, no obligation.
We reply to everything within one business day.