What a school website needs from hosting
A school site is a brochure with two forms and a photo gallery. It is not a portal, and it does not need a server of its own. What it does need is reliable email, a valid certificate and a backup someone can restore.
- Disk for documents. Prospectus PDFs, fee circulars and gallery images add up; a plan with room for a few hundred megabytes of documents covers a year.
- PHP and a database. WordPress or Joomla on the school site needs both, plus enough memory to save a form entry.
- Free SSL. Parents will not fill an admission form on a page the browser marks as not secure.
- Daily backups. The most common school-site ticket is a page deleted by a staff member, not a hack.
- Mailboxes on the school domain.
info@,admissions@andprincipal@carry more traffic than the website does.
Admission week and result day are not the same load
One of these a shared plan absorbs easily. The other one does not, and it is the one schools keep trying to host on the brochure site.
| Event | What happens | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| Admission week | A few hundred parents open the form and upload documents over several days | School site on shared hosting, with the form entries stored in the database |
| Result day | Thousands of students and parents hit one page in the same hour | The ERP or result portal, on its own infrastructure |
| Fee payment | Bursts at the deadline, plus a gateway redirect | The gateway's hosted page, linked from the site |
If results must sit on the school domain, publish a static PDF plus a link to the portal. A database query per visitor on a shared plan is how a school site goes down at 10 am on result day, and no plan upgrade fixes a query that was never indexed.
Which WebJi® plan a school should start on
| Plan | Best for | Price before 18% GST |
|---|---|---|
| L-Basic | A brochure site with a gallery and one form | ₹300/month, ₹3,000 a year |
| L-Unlimited | Admission forms, prospectus downloads, several mailboxes | ₹400/month, ₹4,000 a year |
| L-Developer | A staging copy plus the live site, or a busy parents' portal | ₹700/month, ₹7,000 a year |
Most schools belong on L-Unlimited, because the mailboxes and the form entries are what fill a plan, not the page count. Prices are before 18% GST, and the full list sits on the pricing page. Hosting is billed in INR and every renewal carries a GST invoice.
Email accounts on the school domain
Create a mailbox per function, not per person, so a change of staff does not lose the address. Four addresses cover a school: info@ for general enquiries, admissions@ for the admission form, accounts@ for fee queries and principal@ for escalations.
Use aliases for the rest — office@, admin@, transport@ — pointing at the mailbox of the person who handles that work. Enable webmail so a teacher can check a message from a phone without configuring an app.
SSL, backups and who restores a page
SSL is issued and renewed on the plan, so a certificate that expires is a hosting problem, not a school problem. Backups are the part to agree on in writing: who runs them, how often, how long they are kept and who restores.
On WebJi® shared hosting a daily backup runs on the account, and a restore is a support request. Email support@webji.services with the page path and the date you want back. Support answers by email 24/7 in Hindi and English, and the average first reply is under 60 minutes.
Choosing the domain: .edu.in, .ac.in, .in or .com
The extension is a trust signal for parents, and two of the four are restricted.
- .edu.in is for recognised educational institutions and is issued through the registry's eligibility process, not on demand.
- .ac.in is for academic institutions such as colleges and universities, again subject to eligibility checks.
- .in and .com are open to anyone and can be registered today, which matters if the admission season starts next month.
- Whichever you pick, register it in the school trust's or society's name, not the web vendor's.
Updating the site when staff are not technical
The office needs to publish a circular without calling anyone. Give one staff member an editor login, not an administrator login, and build the notice and gallery pages from fixed templates so a new page cannot break the layout.
Keep a one-page instruction sheet with screenshots: log in, add a notice, choose the category, publish. Anything more complex becomes a support ticket, and the site goes stale between tickets.
Moving an existing school site
Moving is routine: take a full backup, copy the files and database, point DNS at the new server and test the forms before the old host is cancelled. Keep the old account live for a week after the DNS change, because records propagate unevenly.
WebJi® migration is free subject to terms and approval, and the team can do the copy if the current host gives you a cPanel or DirectAdmin backup. Ask before you cancel anything. The shared hosting plans page lists what each plan includes, and the school website cost guide covers the build side.
Frequently Asked Questions
What hosting does a school website need in India?
Shared Linux hosting with PHP, a database, free SSL, daily backups and mailboxes on the school domain. A brochure site with forms and a gallery fits a normal shared plan; a result portal does not.
How much does school website hosting cost?
WebJi® plans are ₹300 a month for L-Basic, ₹400 for L-Unlimited and ₹700 for L-Developer, before 18% GST, with annual billing at ten months' price. L-Unlimited suits most schools because of the mailboxes and form entries.
Will a shared plan survive result day traffic?
Not if every visitor runs a database query. Publish results through the ERP or as a static PDF and link to it. Admission-week traffic over several days is well within a shared plan.
Can we use a .edu.in domain?
Only if the school is a recognised institution and completes the registry's eligibility process. .in and .com are open to anyone and can be registered the same day, which matters close to an admission season.
Who restores a page a staff member deleted?
Support does, from the account's daily backup. Email support@webji.services with the page path and the date, and the team restores that file. Keep one editor login rather than handing out administrator access.