You've shot the rooms, stitched the photos, and built the tour. Now someone actually needs to be able to open it. Sounds simple, right? It should be, but a broken link on a Friday afternoon is the last thing you need.

Hosting is simply the engine that keeps your tour live at a public web address. The only things you really need to care about are: how long does that link work, does it break if you fix a typo, and what does a buyer actually see when they click it? Let's run through the essentials.

What does hosting actually mean?

A 360 tour is just a bunch of panoramic photos stitched together with clickable hotspots. The hosting company stores those files and serves them up as a slick, interactive webpage. You get a URL, you paste it into your listing software, and buyers can walk through the property from their sofa.

A quick note: always keep your original 360 photos backed up. The hosted tour is what the public sees; it shouldn't be your only copy of the raw files.

With Redfield360, you just upload your panoramas, drop your hotspots, add your logo, and hit publish. If you haven't even got your camera out of the bag yet, start with our guide to creating a 360 property tour.

How long will the tour stay live?

Check the expiry date before you promise a vendor a permanent digital keepsake. Redfield360 gives you 12 months of hosting included with every published tour. If a house is stuck on the market for more than a year (ouch), you'll need to know what an extension costs.

It's easy to assume links last forever. They don't. A link might look fine in your CRM, but if the hosting behind it has expired, buyers just get a depressing error page. Just stick a note on the property file so you know when the clock runs out.

Will fixing a typo break the link?

You’ve sent the link to Rightmove, but you've just realised you labelled the "Dining Room" as the "Dinning Room". Oops.

The crucial question is: can you fix it without generating a brand new URL? If the URL changes every time you hit save, you're going to spend your life emailing portal support teams to update listings.

Redfield360 gets this right: republishing updates the tour behind the scenes, but the public URL stays exactly the same. Fix your typo, hit publish, and you're done.

Test it like a buyer

First, open your freshly published link in an incognito window. It should load instantly—no login screens, no passwords, no hassle. A beautiful tour is completely useless if a buyer has to jump through hoops to see it.

Second, check the actual portal listing. Click the "Virtual Tour" button and make sure it goes to the right place. A working tour and a working Rightmove button are two very different things. If you're stuck, read our Rightmove and Zoopla virtual tour guide.

Does it work on a dodgy 4G connection?

Buyers look at houses on the bus, not just on lightning-fast office Wi-Fi. Turn off your Wi-Fi, use mobile data, and see how fast the first room loads. If it takes twenty seconds to render, you might be uploading massive, uncompressed photo files.

We do our best to serve the images quickly, but we can't magically shrink a gigantic 50MB file. Export your panoramas at a sensible size (standard JPGs are fine) so they look good but load fast.

When the sold board goes up

Have a chat with your vendor about what happens when they complete. Do they want the tour left online to show off your marketing, or do they want it taken down because it shows all their furniture? Taking a tour offline should be a one-click job.

When you're picking a hosting platform, forget the flashy gimmicks. Focus on the basics: how long does it stay live, does the link break when you edit, and is it easy to take down?

Redfield360 is strictly pay-per-tour. No monthly subscriptions, no hidden fees. You get 12 months of hosting included, and if you're a verified new user, your first published tour is on us. Check out the full product details here.