What is Web Hosting? And Why Do I Need it?

Some of the newbies think that buying a domain name is enough to get a website live. But  domain is just a name by which people will recognize your website! What makes a website active on the internet though is a website hosting.

A trustworthy web hosting partner is crucial to building a good website. No matter what’s your reason to enter into the World Wide Web, web hosting service is an important step in how your site is going to be viewed by your audience.

Web hosting is a service that lets you store your website’s data in web servers (high-powered computers). And these web servers store all the important information available on your website and serve them to your audience whenever your users type your domain name into their browsers.

It would not be wrong to say that web hosting offers you all the technologies required by your site to be seen on the internet.

We hope now you have a basic idea of what web hosting is. However, as you know one size doesn’t fit all, there are various types of web hosting services available in the market that you can choose as per your requirements and budget. Therefore, it is necessary that before you sign up for a web hosting service, you must think of your purpose to build a website, services your website need, and your budget.

Getting confused? Let’s shed some light on the types of web hosting services according to the different usages.

Types of Web Hosting

Free Web Hosting

As you can judge by the name, it is a non-paid (free) hosting service. As it comes without any cost, it has limited features. Therefore, it might not be ideal for professional bloggers and website owners.

However, if you’re a programming learner who needs a website to test their codes, you can go for it cheerfully. Moreover, startups and individuals who don’t want to invest a huge amount of money in hosting can find this service best fit. Always chose a free web host like this that does not enforce website owners to place annoying ads on their websites.

Shared Web Hosting

This is the most common type of hosting service that is offered by almost every provider. In this type of hosting, your site is hosted on a server that is shared by multiple website owners. As you share server resources (disk space, bandwidth, etc.) you also share the cost. Anywhere you can buy shared hosting for as little as $3 to $10/mo. Shared hosting is capable of fulfilling the requirements of small websites and blogs.

Cloud Web Hosting

This is the new form of hosting service comparatively that allows a number of individual servers function together and act as one big server. In this hosting, cloud servers divide up the hardware resources with other cloud servers, however, they are listed in their own hosting category.

The primary advantage of cloud hosting is that if your website receives unexpected high traffic, your hosting plan will be able to accommodate the traffic surge. Anyone who is expecting good traffic out of their blog or website can go for cloud hosting.

VPS Hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. Although these servers share one physical server yet acts like multiple, isolated servers. It would not be wrong if we say this hosting is something between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. In spite of sharing the same hardware resources, they are given the environment of a dedicated server.

Talking about the price range, it should be between $50 and $200. Usually, pricing depends on the RAM and CPU power you receive.

Dedicated Hosting

In dedicated hosting, you get one entire physical server from your hosting partner that you take control over. With such hosting type, you don’t need to be worried about issues like slow website loading, poor server response, etc.

Companies and individuals that are expecting a huge website traffic may go for dedicated hosting. Speaking of cost, it is significantly higher than you pay in shared hosting or cloud hosting. You may expect to pay $80 and up.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is known as an extension of dedicated hosting in which everything from hardware and software configuration to hardware replacement to technical support is handled by hosting provider itself. While it is not as cheap as shared hosting but a great option for those who don’t want to take the pain of managing a web hosting. The cost of managed hosting is usually between $50 and $80.

So, these were a few popular hosting types that you can choose as per your requirements and budget. Now let’s take a look at the importance of web hosting.

Benefits of Choosing a Good Web Hosting Service

We have already talked a little bit about why we need a web hosting in the beginning, now we will come to know about a few benefits of choosing a good hosting provider. It will be an added advantage for sure.

Fast Page Loading

Investing in good web hosting becomes more important when it comes to page loading speed. Usually, we see bad web hosting providers often have poor quality hardware that slows down the loading speed of your site. So, never pick a poor web hosting.

Search Engine Rankings

Choosing a good web host is also very important from the search engine point of view. If your hosting provider does not offer an uptime of 99.5% or above, you may notice a significant drop in search engine ranking. Remember, search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. penalize websites that go down frequently.

Enjoy Easy Installs

Nowadays, there are many good hosting providers available that help you getting popular scripts such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc. with a single click. It is a convenient method, especially for newbies to install scripts straight from their hosting control panel.

Get Good Storage Space

As we mentioned above a web hosting provider lets you store your website’s data on their server, you should know it in advance that how much space you’re going to get. There are many providers that offer unlimited storage, but with the conditions. So be clear with such things and make your decision accordingly. Go for a reliable web host that offers good storage space at an affordable price.

Final Words

Regardless of your purpose to launch a website, it is vital that you choose a good web hosting service. In this post, we talked about what is web hosting, why do we need it, different types of web hosting services and then the benefits of choosing a reliable host. Hopefully, the post will help you. If you have any query or suggestion let us know in the following comment section. We would be glad to hear from you.

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