Managed hosting vs self-hosting: what is the difference?
| Managed hosting (£10/mo) | Self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Server infrastructure | We manage it | You manage it |
| Data location | Our UK data centres | Your server (anywhere) |
| Uptime responsibility | Food-Ordering.com SLA | Your responsibility |
| SSL certificate | Included, auto-renewed | Your responsibility |
| Database backups | Daily, managed by us | Your responsibility |
| Software updates | Applied by us | Applied by you |
| Data sovereignty | UK servers (GDPR compliant) | Full control — any jurisdiction |
| Best for | Single restaurants, small groups | Enterprises, white-label, data sovereignty |
Who chooses self-hosting?
White-label and OEM resellers
Resellers who licence Food-Ordering.com to offer as their own branded product typically deploy on their own infrastructure. This gives the reseller full control over the platform, allows them to provision new restaurant clients without involving Food-Ordering.com directly, and keeps all client data within the reseller's own environment.
Enterprise and multi-site operators
Large restaurant groups or catering companies with IT departments and existing server infrastructure often prefer to manage the ordering platform alongside their other business systems. Self-hosting allows the ordering system to sit within the same security perimeter, network monitoring, and backup regime as the rest of the enterprise technology stack.
International deployments
Operators deploying in jurisdictions with specific data residency requirements (EU, certain Middle Eastern or Asian markets) may need data to be held on servers in a specific country. Self-hosting on a local cloud provider (AWS Frankfurt, Azure UAE, etc.) satisfies these requirements.
Technical requirements for self-hosting
- Operating system: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or later (recommended), CentOS 8+, Debian 11+
- Web server: Apache 2.4+ or Nginx 1.18+
- PHP: PHP 8.1 or later with standard extensions (PDO, mbstring, curl, json, openssl)
- Database: MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.5+
- SSL certificate: Required (Let's Encrypt is free and suitable)
- Minimum server spec: 2 vCPU, 2GB RAM, 20GB SSD (single restaurant); scale for multi-site deployments
- Mail server or SMTP relay: For order confirmation emails
Frequently asked questions
Can I migrate from managed hosting to self-hosting later?
Yes. If you begin on managed hosting and later decide to migrate to self-hosted infrastructure, we provide the migration assistance. Your data, menus, and configuration transfer to the self-hosted installation. Some resellers start on managed hosting during the pilot phase and migrate to self-hosting when scaling.
What happens to updates on a self-hosted deployment?
Software updates are released periodically. On managed hosting, we apply updates automatically. On self-hosted deployments, updates are provided to you and applied by your team following the update guide. Major version updates are supported for 24 months; security patches are released promptly for all supported versions.
Discuss your self-hosting requirements
Enterprise deployments, white-label integrations, international data residency — talk to us about your infrastructure context and we will provide the right deployment architecture.
Discuss self-hosting Book demoRelated guides
Setup Guide · White-Label Reseller Programme · SaaS vs Licence: Total Cost