Explanation of Web Hosting
Web hosting is a service that web hosts provide so that you can publish your site on the Internet.
How can people discover your web site?
When you create a website and you would like other individuals to observe it, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you attempt to render the site reachable on the Internet by web hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why website hosting services came into being.
How does web hosting work?
Hosting vendors offer you storage space for your site on their high-powered computers (servers) and guarantee constant website accessibility. When someone types your web address (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can have a peek at the content of your site.
Hosting types
With the development of online technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to meet the various demands of website owners, among them shared web hosting services, VPS server web hosting services and dedicated web server hosting services.
Shared website hosting
Shared website hosting is the most widely used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to begin with. It is a service where one single server is shared between plenty of hosting clients who are limited by the CPU, traffic and web server space quotas that they have been apportioned. This type of website hosting is commonly less expensive - you don't need to pay for the entire hosting server in advance, since it is divided among numerous users, and the web hosting solutions provider can afford to offer much cheaper prices. It is also much easier to use - the hosting server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.
The downside of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other hosting account holders and if a given web site becomes really busy it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the web sites on that hosting server, but most hosting service providers, including us at Web Hosting, have protection systems at work that hinder that from taking place.
A definition of a web hosting service
Since shared website hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, most web hosting suppliers and hosting clients simply refer to it as hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive rivalry on the website hosting market, most web hosting service providers strive to offer modest prices and bonuses with their services. We, for example, provide different hosting plans and two invoicing options - monthly and annual, based on your finances. If you select the annual billing cycle, you will obtain a present - one free domain registration.
VPS hosting packages
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated hosting solution. If your web site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting package, a virtual web server is an appropriate solution. Virtual Private Server hosting customers still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS server hosting customers, but the physical machine is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured almost like an actual dedicated web hosting server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a VPS web server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology gives you much more autonomy to configure your VPS web hosting server, but it also calls for a more advanced level of technical knowledge.
Dedicated Hosting
With the Dedicated Hosting solution, the client obtains an entire dedicated server and can use all its system resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most reliable of all hosting solutions and offers a multitude of customization options - the dedicated web hosting users can pick the hardware and software specs that will fulfill their demands. Dedicated system resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated web server is an excellent choice for a high resource-devouring corporate website, for example - you will not share the web server's system resources with anyone else and will have root access. You will have complete authority over the hosting server, which will enable you to make any server configuration changes that you might need. The setback of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical competence is needed - unless you engage an IT professional, you will be responsible for managing and configuring the dedicated hosting web server. The dedicated web server hosting solution also costs far more, since the cost of the physical machine isn't shared among any other users.
A website hosting tip for novices
If you are just beginning to set up your web site and are seeking a web hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most relevant option. If your website grows beyond your shared web hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and requires no migration of your web site files, because only the features of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any particular moment without having to worry about the number of days remaining before the expiration date. In addition, if you finally reach the most advanced shared website hosting plan and still require more system resources (which is great sometimes - it means that your website's popularity has grown!), there always is the possibility to move to a VPS web server hosting solution or a dedicated web hosting solution without the need to change hosting providers.
| Pro | Pro Plus | Expert | Starter |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $3.92 / month | $8.67 / month | $12.50 / month | $3.00 / month |