What are common mistakes in website hosting and deployment setups?

Common hosting and deployment mistakes include deploying directly to production without a staging environment that mirrors production configuration, using FTP for file transfers that expose credentials in plain text, not implementing automated backups with off-site storage and tested restore procedures, and selecting a hosting plan based on cost alone without evaluating the performance, support SLA, and scalability options required.

Deployment mistakes include not using version control for all code changes, deploying without running automated tests so that bugs reach production that would have been caught in a 5-minute test run, and not implementing a rollback plan so that reverting a bad deployment requires manual investigation and intervention under pressure. Shared hosting environments are frequently chosen for initial cost savings but create performance bottlenecks and security exposure that require migration as the site grows, making the initial saving an expensive decision at scale.