Web hosting is an online service that makes your website’s content accessible on the internet. When you purchase a hosting plan, you are renting space on a physical server to store all the website’s files and data.
Web hosts provide the hosting technology and resources required for the effective and secure operation of your website. They are responsible for keeping the server up and running, implementing security measures, and ensuring that data such as texts, photos, and other files are transferred successfully to the visitors’ browsers.
In this article, you will learn what web hosting is, how it works, and what are the different types of web hosting available.
How Does Web Hosting Work?
The server that hosts your website is a physical computer that runs continuously to make the site available for visitors all the time. Buying servers for web hosting will allow you to store all the data of your website in the those servers of your provider.
Once a user enters your domain name into their browser’s address bar, the web host’s server will transfer all the files necessary to load your website.
You can host a website yourself, but it requires extensive technical skills. Self-hosting entails setting up and configuring a web server from scratch, including the equipment, infrastructure, hardware, and software. Furthermore, you will also have to handle all the ongoing maintenance.
A web hosting service provider ensures that your website performs optimally and with better security protocols. In addition, it simplifies the many complex aspects of hosting a website – from software installation to technical support.
Types of Web Hosting Services
With numerous web hosting options available, it can be challenging to determine which one is best for your website.
Most web hosts offer different hosting packages for different types of customers – from business website owners to personal blog creators.
Ideally, you should start with the simplest hosting solution. Once your site gets more traffic, you can upgrade to a more advanced plan.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ones available.
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, multiple users share the same server resources, including memory, processing power, and storage space.
Because of its simplicity and affordability, shared web hosting is an excellent solution for small businesses and personal websites that do not require advanced configuration or higher bandwidth. Hence, shared hosting is an excellent choice for beginners that need cheap hosting to start.
Pros
- Cost-effective, ideal for small-scale websites
- Technical expertise is not required
- Pre-configured server options
- No need to take care of maintenance and server administration
Cons
- Minimal access to server configuration
- Increased traffic on other websites can affect your website’s speed
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
With this web hosting type, your website also shares a physical server with other users, but the web host creates a virtual partition for each user. Thus, a site hosted on a virtual private server get an allocated amount of resources.
VPS web hosting is a great option for medium-sized sites, eCommerce shops, and large blogs with a rapidly growing number of visitors.
Pros
- Dedicated server space
- Increased traffic on other websites has no impact on your site’s performance
- Root access to the server
- High customizability
Cons
- Users need technical expertise to manage it
- Even though it’s relatively affordable, some users may have to hire a developer to manage the virtual server, increasing the overall costs
WordPress Hosting
This type of CMS web hosting service provides a WordPress-optimized server environment to help your site load faster and minimize potential issues. However, other types of web hosting still work for websites based on this popular content management system (CMS).
Typically, the best WordPress hosting plans come with features such as pre-installed themes, plugins for core functions like caching and security, and other tools.
Pros
- Low cost and beginner-friendly
- Optimized performance for WordPress sites
- Customer support team trained in WordPress issues
- Pre-installed WordPress plugins and themes
Cons
- Not an ideal type of web hosting for non-WordPress websites
