The short version
A hosted desktop is a full Windows desktop — your applications, files, settings and shortcuts — that runs on a server in a datacentre instead of on the computer in front of you. You connect to it over the internet from a laptop, desktop, thin client or tablet, and it looks and behaves like a normal PC. The difference is that the actual computing happens somewhere professionally managed, backed up and secured.
Close the lid at the office, open a different laptop at home, and you're looking at the same desktop, mid-task, exactly where you left it.
Hosted desktop, cloud desktop, virtual desktop, DaaS — what's the difference?
Mostly branding. Hosted desktop and cloud desktop are the everyday terms. Virtual desktop (or VDI) describes the underlying technique — many desktops running as virtual machines on shared server hardware. DaaS (Desktop as a Service) is the industry label for buying it as a monthly service rather than building it yourself. Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is the Microsoft technology many providers, including us, build these environments on.
When a UK business searches for any of these, they almost always want the same thing: staff logging into a consistent, secure desktop from anywhere, without the business running its own servers.
How it works, briefly
Your provider runs server infrastructure in a datacentre. On it, they build a Windows environment with your applications installed — accounts packages, practice or case management, CRM, Office — and create a login for each member of staff. Staff connect using a small client application or a browser. Keystrokes and mouse movements travel up; screen updates travel down. The data itself stays in the datacentre.
That last point does most of the heavy lifting. Files don't live on the laptop that gets left on a train. Leavers don't walk out with local copies. Backups happen centrally, once, properly — instead of depending on whether each person's machine was on at the right time.
What businesses actually use it for
The typical mover is a business of anywhere from 2 to 100+ staff that has some combination of: an ageing office server that's due an expensive replacement, staff who need to work from home or across sites, desktop software that everyone needs the same version of, or data that a regulator, client or insurer expects to be handled properly. Accountancy practices, law firms, adviser firms, recruitment agencies and multi-site businesses are the classic cases — the software they depend on is desktop software, and the data they hold is sensitive.
Who it doesn't suit
Honesty helps here. If your entire toolset is already cloud-native — everything in a browser, nothing installed — a hosted desktop adds a layer you may not need. If your work is heavy 3D graphics, video editing or GPU rendering, standard hosted desktops will disappoint; that workload needs GPU-backed resources, which cost more and should be scoped explicitly. And everything depends on a working internet connection, so a business with genuinely poor connectivity should fix that first.
What it costs
Pricing is per user per month and depends on the applications you run and the resources they need. In the UK market, managed hosted desktops typically land somewhere between £30 and £100 per user per month depending on spec and service level — we've written a separate, more detailed guide to hosted desktop pricing.
The clearly marked sales pitch
We're PrimeNodes. We build and manage hosted desktop environments in a UK datacentre for businesses from 1–2 users to 100+ seats, and we scope your actual software and workload before quoting rather than selling a flat tier that fits nobody. If that sounds relevant, the button below goes to a human, not a funnel.