Charities and nonprofits have growing online needs, from running fundraising platforms and online stores to deploying internal portals and handling sensitive data. With income prioritized for frontline services, they also often operate on limited budgets and have few technical staff. In this post, we explain why scalable and affordable hosting is vital for NGOs and nonprofits, and the hosting features that support long-term goals and day-to-day operations.
Infrastructure for complex websites
Today, websites play a major role in nonprofit operations. Besides sharing information and accepting donations, they also deliver services, manage logistics and provide internal access for various teams. A typical organisation might run:
- Online shops that sell donated goods or campaign merchandise
- International websites or multilingual hubs for overseas visitors and staff
- Secure portals for staff and volunteers, providing training, rotas and safeguarding policies
- Event registration and ticketing systems
- Education and community outreach platforms with user accounts and content libraries
- CRM and donation platforms with API integrations
To successfully provide these kinds of services, nonprofits need hosting that is secure, reliable and high-performance, and which has the resources to support its applications, traffic and integrated external tools.
Traffic surges and seasonal demand
Campaigns and appeals can lead to unpredictable traffic spikes. An emergency appeal, a news feature or even a viral social media post can drive thousands of visitors to a donation page within minutes. If the hosting can’t cope with that peak, donations will be lost, limiting the organisation’s ability to deliver its vital work.
Scalable hosting solutions, such as cloud or VPS (virtual private servers), allow nonprofits to increase resources to cope with demand. Cloud hosting, for instance, can support auto-scaling, where additional CPU or bandwidth is automatically provided in real time to ensure critical services always remain available.
What’s more, as additional cloud resources are paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis, there is no need to permanently upgrade to a larger and more expensive hosting plan. This can help minimize overall costs.
Data protection, security and public trust
Nonprofits have to handle sensitive data every day, including donor payment information, personal contact details, safeguarding records and information about vulnerable individuals. Protecting this data is both a legal requirement and a moral obligation.
To comply with regulations such as GDPR and PCI-DSS, organizations have a duty to store and process data securely. However, even with effective policies in place, their systems must be secured from today’s sophisticated threats. According to the government’s Cyber security breaches survey 2025, 30% of UK charities have experienced a cybersecurity breach or attack in the last year.
Secure hosting plays a critical role in protecting nonprofits from attacks by providing:
- SSL certificates that encrypt all user data in transit
- Proactive malware scanning that detects and isolates threats
- Web application firewalls (WAFs) that block suspicious traffic
- Server-level patching and software updates that remove exploitable vulnerabilities
- Account and file isolation to prevent cross-site contamination on public infrastructure
- Encrypted, off-site backups that protect data and enable rapid disaster recovery
- Email filtering that scans for and removes phishing and infected emails
Strong access control is equally important to minimise the risks of compromised login credentials, human error or internal threats. For this reason, hosting should support role-based user access, allow two-factor authentication, and provide audit logs that track who has accessed what and when.
Combined, these measures strengthen security, improve compliance and help maintain public trust in the organisation.
Reducing the technical burden
There are over 170,000 registered charities in the UK, most of which employ fewer than 25 people. Many of these organizations will not have a dedicated IT team and will rely on general staff or volunteers to manage their websites. This can mean that day-to-day website maintenance and management can be onerous, a technical challenge and potentially risky.
A managed hosting provider can help reduce the burden. Managed services include:
- Server monitoring
- Security patching and updating of the operating system
- Optimising server performance
- Automated backups
- 24/7 technical support
Included in the hosting plan, a managed hosting provider carries out these technical tasks for organizations, saving them time and worry, while ensuring an expert is always on hand to assist with any issues.
Sustainable hosting matters
With sustainability being a core value for many charities, it’s important that their hosting reflects this. While data centres use significant amounts of energy, some hosting providers are committed to net zero and are working hard to minimise their environmental impact.
This includes using 100% renewable energy, holding ISO 14001 certification, and participating in carbon offsetting programmes. Many are also deploying energy-efficient hardware and AI technologies that reduce energy consumption.
Supporting international delivery
Global NGOs and international charities often require websites to be accessible across continents. Hosting should support international performance by utilising low-latency infrastructure and enabling integration with content delivery networks (CDNs). CDNs serve websites from globally dispersed data centres and thus speed up delivery for users in different locations.
Conclusion
For NGOs, charities and nonprofits, the right web hosting does more than put a website online; it ensures that fundraising and online services can be delivered without interruption. At the same time, it protects organizations and those they support from threats, while helping them scale operations, meet compliance obligations and reduce the burden on staff.
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