Cheap Hosting : Is It For You?

By Margert Barganier


The internet has been part and parcel of our daily lives in such a way that if you take it away, our world would grind into a halt and become a lame one. There are millions of websites driving the internet, from social media sites to entirely business related ones. Given such a scenario, "website hosting" has become a relatively common term. But what exactly is website hosting?

Web hosting is the service that allows both individuals and businesses to create their own website on the internet. Companies who provide web hosting services have servers or computers on which the data that makes up the website is hosted, hence the term website hosting. Website owners, also known as webmasters, upload their web content to the web host for storage and publication on the internet. There you go, the concept is pretty easy to understand. This is what allows people from virtually anywhere in the world to use the internet to access a particular website.

There are scores of website hosting options, plans or packages that are out in the market today. There are free website hosting plans which are suited for individuals or for new businesses with a small budget for their presence in the internet. There are others who offer their services at a very affordable cost while retaining all the features that you may need. These are called paid website hosting which is great for established businesses or organizations, and provides more storage and features for the hosted website.

When you have made up your mind that you would need the services of a webhost, then you have to take into consideration several factors in order to end up with the right one for your website. Check the bandwidth and disk space being offered to you. The bandwidth refers to the amount of data traffic that can take place between your website and the internet. If your website has sufficient amount of bandwidth, then it would be easier for potential visitors to view your site. In case you don't have enough bandwidth, data files such as images, audio and video will not be able to load quickly onto your web page. This could discourage those attempting to use your website. Security and privacy are also of paramount importance, especially if you intend to use the website for business purposes. It would be wise to contact the website hosting company and inquire about their security and privacy features, and then compare them with other website hosts. You can then sift through the details and come up with the best webhost which could accommodate all your needs.

The next stage would be picking the appropriate hosting type. There are many types of hosting, among which are shared hosting, virtual private web server, and a dedicated server. Shared website hosting accommodates multiple websites on a single server by allocating each site its own portion of server space. Almost all web hosting companies today provide shared web hosting feature to their clients. Shared hosting is also called virtual hosting, its is appropriate for low budget and entry-level hosting services. It can provide adequate disk space and bandwidth for most personal or small-business websites. A virtual private server (VPS), also known as collocation is best suited for websites that require advanced functions such as load-balancing and clustering, custom software, and hardware configurations. A dedicated server is owned by a single user and is accorded complete rights over it. This means your website does not share storage space on a server with any other client. Your site has private access to the server it's hosted on. Dedicated server is the best option if you have a busy or intricate website but you don't want to operate your own server.

What has been discussed above is just an overview of the concepts behind website hosting. There are more grounds to cover so you may need to arm yourself with as much information as possible and dig into the kennel of website hosting so that you can make the right choice as to your host, hosting type, and your hosting plan. Once you become adept with the entire concept, then you will realize that website hosting can pay dividends in the long run.




About the Author: