A lot has changed in web hosting over the past decade. Expectations around web performance and availability have increased and hosting infrastructure has had to evolve to keep up.
As we celebrate 10 years of 20i, here are 10 lessons we’ve learned that continue to shape how we build our platform and support our customers.
The importance of great customer support
We’ve always believed that customers should be able to speak to people who understand the platform they are supporting.
That means having experienced technical teams available 24/7 and giving them the knowledge and tools to solve problems rather than simply pass them elsewhere.
Great infrastructure is important, but having the right people there when you need help is just as crucial.
“You can build a great platform, but you still need great people behind it. Customers need to know that if they ever need help, there’s a team there they can rely on.”
Chris Wright, Customer Support Manager at 20i
Premium hosting doesn’t have to mean premium prices
We’ve always believed that high-performance web hosting shouldn’t be reserved for customers with big budgets.
Premium hosting means providing fast servers, generous resources, useful features and reliable infrastructure, while keeping it accessible.
With our platform, you’ll get:
- Autoscaling cloud servers
- Global CDN
- Optimised PHP
- Loading balancing
- Web Acceleration Suite
- Redundant Web Servers
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited disk space
- Anti-DDoS protection
- Built-in WAF
Delivering more value without compromising on quality has been central to our approach from day one.
Listen to your customers
Some of the best ideas for improving a hosting platform come from the people using it every day.
Customers see where workflows could be quicker, where a control panel could be clearer and where a new feature could save them time.
Here’s just some of the things we’ve implemented from real customer feedback:
- Manual renewal option for Cloud Servers
- Express checkouts for Stripe in HostShop
- Czech, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and Finnish StackCP languages
- Timeline Backups Pro package type limit
- SSO gateway link
- Twentie personal assistant chats per Team Member
That feedback gives us a better understanding of what matters outside our own development roadmap.
➡️ Got an idea? Send it to us through our feedback form.
Sustainability should be built into hosting
Websites need physical infrastructure to exist, and that infrastructure consumes energy.
The responsibility of hosting companies to consider their environmental impact has grown through the years and we’ve learned that sustainability needs to be built into how a hosting business operates, from the data centres and servers we use to the energy that powers them.
That’s why we’re proudly powered by 100% renewable energy! ♻️ 🌎
Never stop innovating 🚀
Web hosting has changed significantly over the past 10 years. A hosting platform cannot stand still while everything around it moves forward.
That’s why we continue to invest in our own software, infrastructure and tools. Building our own technology gives us more control over what we improve and how quickly we can respond when customer requirements change.
“If we want to keep moving forward, we need to keep building, improving and innovating ourselves.”
Austin Beresford, Development Manager at 20i
Performance and reliability must work together
A website that loads quickly is useful. A website that loads quickly but disappears when traffic increases is not.
Our approach has increasingly focused on infrastructure that can respond to changing demand while reducing single points of failure.
Autoscaling allows resources to adapt as demand changes, while load balancing, redundancy and automatic failover help keep services available when individual components have problems.
Security should never be an afterthought
Every publicly accessible website is a potential target. That means security must exist across the hosting platform rather than relying on one tool or expecting website owners to handle everything themselves.
Different threats also require different defences. DDoS protection addresses a different problem from malware scanning, while a Web Application Firewall helps filter malicious requests before they reach an application.
🔒 How we keep your websites secure:
- WAF
- Automatic Malware Scanning
- DDoS Protection
- StackProtect & Brute Force Defence
- Free SSL Certificates
- FTP Locks
- 2FA
The lesson we have learned is that hosting security needs multiple layers and those layers need to keep evolving as threats change.
Make hosting simpler, not more complicated
Behind a website sits a substantial amount of technology: servers, DNS, databases, TLS certificates, backups, caching, email and more.
Developers and agencies may want detailed control over these technologies, but that doesn’t mean routine tasks should be difficult.
Good hosting should expose the controls people need while automating repetitive work wherever it makes sense.
That’s just one of the reasons we have continued developing our own control panels and management tools.
Invest in people as well as technology
Behind the platform are developers building new tools, system administrators maintaining infrastructure and support teams helping customers solve problems.
Having our own development team and software gives us the freedom to build around the needs of our customers rather than simply working within the constraints of an off the shelf hosting platform.
“The single most important thing we’ve done is to have our own development team and have all our own software. It means that we can respond to exactly what customers require and everything is integrated.”
Tim Brealey, Co-Director at 20i
Embrace what’s next
Cloud infrastructure, automation and AI are already changing how websites are developed, managed and supported. But adopting something simply because it’s new rarely makes a better hosting platform.
The important question is whether a technology solves a genuine problem. Can it improve performance? Reduce manual work? Make infrastructure more resilient? Give customers better tools?
Our final lesson from the past 10 years is to keep looking forward, without losing sight of why we are building something in the first place.
Here’s to the next 10 years 🎉
I am very impressed with 20i services, and this hosting is the only choice for my websites.