Before you can enjoy a beautifully-designed website, it’s important to know where your website is going to be hosted. You may be wondering what web hosting actually is or whether it even matters. Learn more about hosting and the different types of web hosting options available to maintain your business’s website.
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Simply put, web hosting is a service that allows businesses to create a website and have it published on the internet. A web host or web hosting service provider is a business that provides the technology and support needed on the backend for a website to “go live” and stay active online.
Defining Web Hosting
If the world wide web was a neighborhood and a website was a house, hosting your website can be equated to buying a lot to build a home. Like houses, websites can’t be built without some type of support and need a server to store the HTML, CSS, and images that make up a website. This amount of space available on a server depends on the type of hosting package.
Different Web Hosting Options
There are a couple of different types of web hosting packages and options available. The web hosting provider may offer different bandwidth or support plans for their particular hosting. For web hosting, in general, there are five different types: shared, dedicated, VPS, cloud, and reseller.
- Shared hosting – As the name suggests, this type of hosting is when a website is hosted on the same server as other websites. Most web hosting companies provide shared hosting because it is inexpensive and provides enough resources for websites that don’t expect a lot of traffic.
- Dedicated hosting – Also known as managed hosting, this type of hosting provides an entire server for a particular website to be stored on. While having a dedicated server is more expensive to host than a shared hosting plan, it’s preferable for sites that have a lot of traffic to maintain total control and security.
- VPS hosting – Virtual private servers (VPS) is a hosting service that appears to have a dedicated virtual server for each website but is actually storing multiple websites. Many small businesses who want a dedicated server without the expensive cost choose this option given its flexibility.
- Cloud hosting – Somewhat new to the web hosting industry, this type of hosting is located across many interconnected web servers. While it can have a much higher cost for website owners, it offers unlimited disk space and reliable bandwidth speed guaranteed to meet the demands of larger websites.
- Reseller hosting – Much like it sounds, this type of hosting involves the account owner using their allotted hard drive space to host a website for third parties. This could be beneficial for hosting owners who have purchased hosting space that they don’t need and can share those resources with another party looking for an affordable hosting option.
Domain Hosting vs Web Hosting
Many businesses looking for a website builder may be faced with having to find both a domain and hosting option for their new website. To the unfamiliar user, these terms may sound like the same thing but there are key differences. Domain hosting is the hosting address for your particular web site’s domain (the address that users type into an internet browser to access or website). Web hosting, however, is where your entire website is being stored. Together, both the domain host and web host work together to make your website possible on the internet.
Host Your Website Securely
Regardless of whether you have a new website or not, having a web hosting service is crucial for keeping your website active. Design Squid is proud to offer secure hosting services to ensure your website receives the support it needs to stay running smoothly. When you host your website on our server, you’ll receive one-on-one technical support and help for any troubleshooting needs that may arise.
Get in touch for more information about our web hosting services.
