If you want to run a website online, then you are going to need to purchase some web hosting. On this page, we want to talk to you a little bit about what web hosting actually is, as well as help you to make the choice between which web hosting service is the right one for you.
What is Web Hosting?
When you purchase web hosting, you are essentially buying some ‘storage space’ that is connected to the internet. This will be on a computer elsewhere in the world.
You will be uploading your website information to this storage space. When people type in your domain name into their web browser, they will be taken to your web hosting. It really is simple stuff.
It is important that you do your research to ensure that you work with the right web hosting provider.
Different Types of Web Hosting
When you are looking to purchase web hosting, you will quickly notice that there are several different options available to you. This includes:
Shared hosting: this is where your website will be stored on a shared web server, often with hundreds of other websites. You will be sharing resources with these websites.
Dedicated servers: this is where your website will have a whole server to itself. So, basically, your website is the only site on this computer.
Virtual Private Server: this is pretty much a hybrid of the two previous hosting types. Your website will be stored on a shared server, but it will have its own dedicated resources, and thus speed will not be hampered by other websites there.
How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for You
If your budget is limited, then you will likely need to be going down the route that you want to be going down is shared hosting. A shared hosting account can be had for just a few dollars per month.
The major downside for shared web hosting is the fact that there are a lot of websites stored on the server, and they only have a limited number of resources shared between them. This means that your website can load quite slowly during peak times of the day, and your SEO may be impacted.
Dedicated servers are incredibly fast as your website will be the only one stored on the server. Yes. They can be expensive, but if you are running a larger website, then this is the best route for you to go be going down.
VPS costs sit between shared and dedicated web servers. This is the route to go down if you are planning on running a business online, but you do not have a huge budget available to you. With the best VPS services, you will be able to have a decent ability to choose the amount of resources you want on your server. Although, do bear in mind that even though you have dedicated resources, the server will still be a lot slower than dedicated servers.