Published on March 3rd, 2021 | by Sunit Nandi

Your Ultimate Guide to Web Hosting

If you have clicked on this article, you must be someone who is trying to start up their website. Are you wondering what is web hosting and how is it necessary? You may not know anything yet, but we assure you, once you are done reading this article, you can easily distinguish which type of wen host server you need and how you can find the best services for you.

Launching your website is not a walk in the park, especially if you have no prior knowledge about the technicalities of the world wide web or the internet. Luckily, this kind of information is now easily accessible with just one click. Furthermore, hundreds up to thousands of companies offer services that can help you with web hosting, web design, and more. It means that as long as you have enough budget and equipment, you can quickly start-up your website — whether it is for your online business, blog, etc.

As a start, we will be explaining below everything you need to know about web hosting: what it is, the type of servers available, and how to choose hosting services and providers.

What is web hosting?

Anyone can create and design their webpages for websites; however, they would not be able to publish them and have them accessible to an audience 24/7 if the files used are not saved on a server. This is where the need for web hosting service providers such as Oxygen Digital comes in. . Web hosts provide these servers that can be leased or bought by different clients. This server will serve as space where all the data used to design and layout your website, like graphics, images, documents, codes, etc., are being stored.

Aside from space, web hosts also provide the bandwidth that determines the speed of delivering the site’s data or content to your visitors. It means that if you have more content on your website and you expect higher traffic, you need to avail of a plan with more significant storage and bandwidth to accommodate your needs.

Web hosting companies offer different plans at varying costs. These plans also vary based on the major types of web hosting. Now we will explain one by one what are these.

Types of Web Hosting

The analogy of it being the same with real estate will be used for each type to fully understand the types of web hosting and how they differ from one another.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most basic and most affordable type of web hosting. As its name suggests, in shared hosting, the server will be shared by several different websites. When you rent an apartment where you have multiple roommates — you have to share the bathroom, living room, kitchen, and most of the common areas. It is the same with a shared server — your website and the other websites of other clients in the server have to utilise the same resources. With the amount of storage and the price, this type of web hosting is suitable for small websites just starting.

The catch with shared hosting, although it is cheap, is that since you are sharing all the space and the bandwidth with several other websites, the tendency of catching errors and slowing down data transfer is high. Moreover, the division of these resources is also not equal, which means that if one website is more significant than yours, it may hog all bandwidth and cause your site to slow down.

VPS Hosting

After living a year in a shared apartment and you finally felt you had outgrown the limited space, it is time for an upgrade — maybe you could rent out an entire unit for yourself already. This is what VPS hosting is like — having an apartment unit all for yourself.

With VPS or Virtual Private Server, you get to allocate for yourself a portion of the resources from the server, although you still share with other clients. These resources are exclusive for you to utilise, which means you do not have to compete for storage and bandwidth.

Dedicated Hosting

An upgrade from VPS, dedicated hosting is like owning the entire building. You get to have your server that you can maximise and exhaust a vast amount of resources. Sounds good, right? However, dedicated hosting can be expensive and excessive space for websites that are just starting. Dedicated servers are advisable to websites that are extremely popular and expect high traffic.

WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting providers specialise in improving websites from WordPress — optimising them to become more efficient than usual. Clients can also choose from shared, managed, or VPS WordPress hosting.

Colocation Hosting

Colocation hosting is when you lease a physical space in an already established hosting provider’s data centre and using that space to set-up your own servers and computers.

Self-Service Hosting

If you plan to manage your websites by setting up your private servers and maintaining the computers yourself, you are self-hosting. Having enough resources and knowledge about self-managing servers and websites, building and hosting your servers can be a good option.

Where can I find web hosting services?

It is now easy to find several web hosting providers just by searching through the internet. However, you should know how to distinguish which one is the most reliable and will provide you with the best value for your money.

Before anything else, decide which type of web hosting are you going to avail of. Some companies specialise in one particular type, although they also offer other hosting services. IO Zoom, for example, is a web hosting company that specialises in providing VPS hosting plans to its clients. If you are interested in signing up for WordPress or Forex VPS Hosting, you should visit their website.

Once you have decided and have found your potential web hosts, examine the plans that they are offering. Look into the features included and add-ons that you can purchase.

Lastly, and probably the most significant deciding factor of all, gauge the quality of the customer support they provide. You can scroll through the reviews and testimonials from their previous clients. You could also contact them directly and ask about their services. You want your web hosting services provider to be able to accommodate you any time of day.

So, is availing of web hosting services worth it?

Web hosting in creating and launching your website is a necessity. So, asking if it is a worthy spend is not a valid question at all. You have to find the best web host that offers reliable and suitable hosting services for your needs. For it to be worth it, find the best web hosting plants and sign-up with a credible hosting company.

Tags: guide, ultimate, web hosting

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.