Most small businesses don’t fail because of bad technology — they fail because of small, repeated IT decisions that quietly drain time, money, and credibility. In 2026, these five mistakes are still the most common (and expensive) we see across UK SMEs.
Mistake #1: Buying “cheap” hosting
£3-a-month hosting looks great until your site goes down, emails stop sending, or your website loads so slowly that visitors leave. Cheap hosting usually means shared servers, minimal support, poor performance, and no accountability.
- Slow sites lose enquiries.
- Downtime kills trust.
- Support queues cost staff time.
Mistake #2: No real backups
Many SMEs think they have backups because “the hosting company does something” or files are “in the cloud”. That is not a backup strategy.
- Accidental deletion happens.
- Hacked sites happen.
- Ransomware still happens.
Mistake #3: DIY email security
Email is still the number one way businesses lose money through phishing, spoofing and missed enquiries. DIY setups often miss critical controls.
- No MFA
- Incorrect SPF/DKIM/DMARC
- No monitoring of delivery failures
Mistake #4: Ignoring website performance
A “nice-looking” website that loads slowly, breaks on mobile, or doesn’t clearly guide users to contact you is a silent lead killer.
- Slow pages lose impatient users.
- Confusing layouts lose conversions.
- No tracking means no improvement.
Mistake #5: No one accountable for IT
The most expensive mistake of all: no one owns the outcome. IT is “everyone’s job” until something breaks — then it’s no one’s responsibility.
- No owner of security
- No owner of backups
- No owner of performance
Want to remove these risks from your business?
Turbo Digital helps SMEs replace fragile DIY IT with stable, managed systems — covering hosting, email, backups, security and performance in one accountable service.
Request a Quick IT Risk Review