What Is Web Hosting [How It Works & Different Types]

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The internet has taken over the world—even the youngest generation seems to be born tech-savvy. At this stage of the internet’s evolution, virtual spaces have grown broader, accommodating increasingly more material.

As the digital arena expands, opportunities also increase. Web hosting is one of the many new opportunities that have evolved. This article addresses what web hosting is and the different types of web hosting available in the market.

What Is Web Hosting?

A website takes up a certain amount of space on the Web, allocating room on a webserver to store a website’s files. Web server hosting creates the files that make a website (with codes, pictures, etc.) accessible online.

The process of borrowing or procuring space on the internet to house a website is the actual web hosting definition. In layman’s terms, web hosting makes the internet a warehouse to store everything you need.

Website files are hosted on servers, which are computers that connect other online (global) users to your website. Web hosting servers (service providers), as the name implies, include the servers, connections, and related services needed to host websites.

How Does Web Hosting Work?

With web hosting, files that constitute a website are uploaded from a local computer to a web server. The server’s resources (hard drive space, RAM, and bandwidth) are divided among the websites that use it.

What is a web host? Web hosts are companies and service providers that help you host websites on the internet—it’s like a landlord giving up part of their space in exchange for money.

Users can reach your website simply by putting your domain name into their web browser once hosted by the hosting firm. Their computer then connects to the server where your website is housed. The files you’ve saved on the storage are then sent to the website server. The website is then available to your web visitor in their web browser. Web hosting works by:

Storing Your Files

Webspace (or storage space) refers to the amount of space on a web application that web hosting firms allocate to website owners—including the total number of text files, photos, scripts, databases, emails, and other particulars associated with your website.

Maintaining the Server

Upgrades to the content management system, plugins and module updates, backup scheduling, and server and security updates are all common maintenance activities. All hardware, software, and network updates are performed proactively, as needed by web page hosts. Minor version updates are made in real-time, whereas significant version upgrades are made after vetting.

Preventing Security Breach

Many website owners overlook the security of a website. Although it is practically difficult to have a completely secure website, you can still take precautions to make your website as secure as possible. You have a physical data center that should be safeguarded. Any necessary firewalls then protect the servers themselves. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a sort of encryption that takes place between two computers.

SSL encryption scrambles any information transmitted between the website hosting server and browser, disallowing third-party access. Therefore, SSL encryption is a critical component of any credible website. You won’t even need to incorporate SSL into your price if you choose your hosting provider correctly.

NOTE: A robust website hosting service is necessary for your brand to provide high-quality service to the public—significant benefits of hosting include improved performance and increased security. Therefore, knowing how to host a website is an advantage.

Types of Website Hosting

Different forms of web hosting have been established as technology has progressed to fulfill the demands of websites and clients. Some of the various site hosts include Shared Web Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, Cloud, and reseller hosting.

Shared Hosting

When a website is housed on the same server as several other websites, it’s referred to as shared hosting. Most web hosting firms offer shared hosting, which is inexpensive and straightforward to set up—making it a suitable choice for new sites that don’t expect much traffic immediately.

Shared hosting is best suited for personal websites and small- and medium-sized company websites. But if you’re serious about digital marketing or establishing an internet marketplace, you should carefully look into shared hosting choices.

With the question, ‘what is a hosting provider,’ you should consider which one is the best option for shared hosting?

  • Bluehost Web Hosting services provide you a customized plan that makes it simple to build and launch your website at $175.00 per month. This is an excellent choice for a new website or blog. Features of an easy-to-use consumer dashboard include one-year domain, SSL, and SEO tools.

The basic features that each plan has include scalability, resource protection, SSL certificate, and domain management. But there are also many add-ons that you can choose with other plans, such as CDN, access control, unique IPs, etc. You can get a more detailed Bluehost review here.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting (also known as managed hosting or dedicated server) allows you to rent complete servers. Compared to shared hosting plans, this sort of hosting is more expensive; as a result, it’s only utilized as hosting for a website when a website has a lot of traffic or when more server management is necessary.

Dedicated hosting entails more than just hosting a single website with the entire server infrastructure stored in a data center. Dedicated hosting comes under the top-rated eCommerce hosting. Additionally, it enables more self-service server management options.

Because it gives you complete control over the server, software, and security systems, dedicated hosting is considered a more flexible arrangement. But to operate the platform yourself, you’ll require technological knowledge. What is a good hosting server for dedicated hosting?

  • Liquid Web provides you with dedicated server solutions that are highly advanced in management to meet your company’s requirements. Their dedicated server hosting is available for two operating systems: Linux and Windows.

Their offerings include dedicated servers with single and multiple processors. Self-sufficient in managing, completely managed server hosting options are also available. Their cheapest plan starts from $169.00 per month.

VPS Hosting

Virtual private servers (VPS)—also known as virtual dedicated servers (VDS)—are virtual servers that look to each client as a dedicated server, even though they support several websites. As a result, VPS hosting is seen as a stepping stone between shared hosting and purchasing your dedicated website server.

The key difference between shared hosting and VPS is that clients have complete control over VPS configuration, making it much closer to dedicated hosting. Smaller websites and companies commonly utilize VPS because they want the flexibility of a dedicated server without exorbitant fees. You can read more on quality VPS hosting options before making any choice.

  • HostGator provides high-traffic VPS hosting. Its main features include high-speed SSD storage, provision, and full-root access. Website migration is also free. HostGator is similar to a shared internet hosting server that has been divided into smaller sub-servers based on a software configuration.

This provider is ideal for small- and medium-sized websites that require a specific server configuration, e.g., for the use of a different programming language. Consider a more detailed HostGator review before making a choice. As one of the best windows VPS hosting services, HostGator’s VPS services start at $80.00 per month. HostGator’s VPS services start at $80.00 per month as one of the best window VPS hosting services.

WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting refers to any hosting that has been specifically designed to run WordPress. Although additional WordPress hosting types are available, managed and shared web hosting is the most

t frequent. The most affordable type of WordPress hosting includes shared WordPress hosting, commonly known as WordPress hosting.

WordPress managed to host is the other option of a website server. The managed hosting platform gives you a high-performance server environment, as well as a dedicated WordPress team to help you get the most out of WordPress.

  • DreamHost contains various features and add-ons that make it simple for you to succeed at any stage of your online venture. You can also read more on great WordPress hosting solutions before making a choice. One significant advantage is that DreamHost’s price and plans include many complete services, such as disc space and bandwidth. When your site becomes renowned, you won’t have to worry about disc storage or network transfer.

Key Takeaways

What is website hosting? It’s the process of borrowing or purchasing space in the online world to house a website.
Companies that rent their services and technologies to host websites on the internet are known as web hosts; the process is also called internet hosting.
Users can reach your website simply by putting your domain name into their web browser once hosted by the hosting firm. But what is a website domain? 
Web hosting has many benefits, such as increased security due to SSL certification, storage of files, and website management.
There are different types of web hosting provided by multiple web hosting service providers.
Choosing the most appropriate web hosting service is essential, keeping in mind the business needs (stated above) for different types of hosting.

Free vs Paid Hosting

Does ‘paid hosting’ imply a higher-quality, more dependable service? There are additional features that come with paid hosting, but are they worth the money spent? Not always. The major difference is the inclusion of hosting features. Additional disc storage, data transfer, scripting support, and more email accounts are among these features.

The disk storage and data transfer supplied by a free web hosting service would be sufficient for a business to start a new website or a regular website. But it takes time to build a website and attract enough visitors to exceed a free Web hosting package’s storage and data transfer constraints. You can upgrade your service from free Web hosting to paid web hosting account at any time.

Most small enterprises don’t require more than five email accounts. But, of course, the more accounts you have, the more time you’ll need to devote to keeping track of them.

Many free web hosting providers include email aliases (also known as email forwarders), which allow you to give the impression of having many email addresses. In contrast, all emails to these aliases are forwarded and managed by a single account.

Unless you intend to use programs that require complex scripting capabilities—e.g., a content management system or an e-commerce shopping cart—your website files will consist solely of HTML and picture files.

Advanced scripting functionality is not required for HTML and picture files, and therefore any free website hosting servers will suffice.

Free web hosting services might be all you need until your website requires the specialized capabilities given by commercial hosting plans, especially if you want to save money without sacrificing performance.

NOTE: Free and premium web hosting frequently provides the same security, network capacity, and port speed (basic web hosting). So it’s an important decision, and you should know more about how much it costs to host a website

Conclusion 

Web hosting is as important as any other activity that you decide on for scaling your enterprise. Web hosting is similar to having a place where you keep all of your belongings. These servers are managed by web hosts, who make it simple for you to host your website so that people from all over the world may access the contents. But, first, you need to know the difference between server and host and all about the types of web hosting—only then can you move forward with a plan.

FAQ

What is a Web hosting company?

A Web hosting company (or web host) is an Internet hosting service that enables individuals and businesses to make their websites available via the World Wide Web.

Where is a website hosted?

Many companies get their website hosted on the website hoster’s web server. The web hosting business also serves as the registrar in these situations. Some companies also host their websites on their servers.

What is web hosting and domain?

Web hosts enable users to produce and store material on Internet servers, such as a website. Domain hosts offer visitors domain names that allow them to access your website’s content. A domain name registrar is a business that uses the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to buy and sell domains to companies and end-users.

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