SiteSentinel
You need your blog to be fast and secure and for it to be backed up frequently, safely and automatically. DIY hosting (for example, with Digital Ocean) offers none of these. Hosting with Ghost(Pro) offers infrequent backups and a high price tag. Site Sentinel delivers proper backups, strong security and full availability, at a substantially lower cost than any of its competitors.
The biggest problem with a blogging platform is coping with unexpected spikes in demand. Depending on your plan, your Ghost site will be hosted on one, two or more VPSs. However, even this may not be enough. Instead of simply hosting your blog on a VPS, we use Kubernetes. Kubernetes senses increases in demand and automatically deploys more virtual servers to cope with this demand. This means that, even if you experience a spike 100x greater than normal, your blog won't slow down. New servers can be added within minutes, and, because this happens without human intervention, it works 24/7.
Your Ghost site will be hosted on a fast Linux server which is kept up-to-date with the latest security patches. The Ghost software itself will also be updated as new versions come out. If you prefer, you can choose manual updates so that you can test out your templates and plug-ins before moving to a new version. And finally, if you find any incompatibilities with the new version, you can move back to the original version. None of this is possible with any other hosting provider, unless you do it all yourself.
The speed of your blog will be boosted using a fast Content Delivery Network. This means that copies of your files will be stored on "edge servers" scattered around the world. When a users accesses a page, he or she will get the file from the server that is closest.
All plans are stored simultaneously on two separate SSD drives. This means that the biggest cause of site failure – a hard-drive failure – is virtually eliminated. In order for the system to fail two separate drives would have to fail at exactly the same time. Our system monitors the state of the drives at all times, so this is incredibly unlikely.
In addition, all files are backed up to a separate storage system every day. If your content is particularly important your site can be backed up as often as once every 30 minutes. Bear in mind that an active blog with several bloggers could be costing you hundreds of dollars an hour to update: yet other high-availability hosting companies still only back up once a week. Your site will be backed up primarily on-site, so that we can restore your files rapidly if there’s a problem. However, a second backup will be made to a completely different site. You have access to this site, so you can download your files to your own backup system whenever you want. But there’s no need to: all our backups take place automatically, without your having to worry about them. It’s possible to back up your site manually, and even do so automatically, using some plugins. However, these are often unstable and buggy and can create more problems than they solve. They also slow your site down.
We will automatically create and renew your SSL (security) certificate, so visitors to your Ghost site will be able to use https:// without a security warning in their browser.
You can use your own domain. If you don't want to pay for a domain, we can recommend some free alternatives.