Essentially web hosting is the service that makes websites live and accessible on the internet, so that they can be found by people surfing the web. Every website on the internet will be ‘hosted’.

There are a number of different web hosting services available for different types of websites and businesses.

What web hosting do I need?

Choosing the best web hosting can be confusing. There are lots of different types to choose from, and the type of web hosting you need depends on the demands and requirements of your website.

As there are so many different types of hosting available, you need to understand what each web hosting service is, so you know if it is right for your website.

Types of web hosting

• Shared web hosting
• Dedicated Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Cloud Hosting

Shared web hosting

Shared web hosting is the cheapest and most basic type of web hosting. It is best suited to small business websites and personal blogs.

With shared hosting, you share one server with other clients. Websites hosted on the same server share all it’s resources, such as memory, computing power, disk space, and others.

This works well for websites with a small amount of traffic but can become problematic as the website grows and gains more traffic, which requires greater resources to support it.

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting means Virtual Private Server. 

With this type of hosting, you are still sharing a server with other websites, although your host allocates an entirely separate partition for you on that server. This means you get a dedicated server space and a reserved amount of resources and memory.

VPS hosting can be great for medium-sized businesses with a rapidly increasing amount of website traffic. Whilst VPS hosting may be slightly more expensive than shared hosting, it is a better choice for busy websites.

One of the downsides for small businesses is that VPS hosting may require some technical and server management knowledge. It can, however, be a more reliable option as traffic surges on other websites will have no effect on your performance.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is the most reliable web hosting available.

With cloud hosting, your web host provides you with a cluster of servers to support your website. This works by automatically routing traffic to another server in the cluster when one of the cloud servers is busy or encounters a problem.

This results in little to no server downtime, which is exactly what your busy website needs.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting services provide you with your own rented physical server that is dedicated just to your website.

This give you a lot of flexibility over how you want to manage your website, as you can configure your server as you wish, choose the operating system and software, and set up your hosting according to your own needs.

Dedicated hosting is best suited to large online businesses with heavy traffic.

How to pick a web host

One of the reasons DigitalSuperMarket exists is to make it easier for you to choose digital services, such as web hosting.

There are so many different web hosting providers, it can be confusing and difficult to tell which is best for you. Each web hosting provider will offer a number of different hosting plans for different prices and include a number of different features.

It’s important to remember that your web hosting does not necessarily need to be provided by the same provider as your domain name.

One of the important things for you to consider when choosing a web hosting provider are the features included.

Web hosting features

Here’s some of features web hosting services include, so you can choose the best plan and provider for your website.

RAM

RAM means random access memory. 

RAM is memory for temporary data when your website is running multiple processes at the same time.
The more processes your website runs, the more RAM it will need to use. Websites with lots of features or ‘scripts’ will need more RAM avoid problems with the website loading.

Storage

Hosting storage space is the total amount of space on a hosting server where you store files used to create your website. These files can be images, HTML files, website scripts and emails. If your website has a lot of files, you’ll need a larger amount of storage space. If you website is for a small blog or local business, you won’t need as much.

CPU

CPU is a central process unit. More CPUs can store more information and process it faster. CPUs can get overloaded by multiple requests at once, if your site has a lot of traffic. This can cause the website’s performance to suffer, slowing it down and damaging the user experience. Therefore if you have a larger website with lots of users, you will need a higher amount of CPUs.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the rate of data transfer. It is the measure of the maximum amount of data a server is able to transfer in a given time. If you have a small website, you won’t use as much bandwidth. However, if you have a large website, with large photos and media, then your bandwidth requirement will be a lot higher.

Uptime

Uptime is the amount of time your website is live without any technical problems. This is usually measured as a percentage of the time, with a small amount of downtime where your website will not be live due to the server being down for maintenance or technical issues. You want as close to 100% uptime as possible, so that your website is always visible.

Free Domain Name

Some web hosting services will offer a free domain name (web address). Check the offer, as this may only be for the first year, and may only include certain domain names.

SSL Certificate 

Some web hosts include an SSL certificate with your hosting plan. If an SSL is not included, you will need to purchase this separately.

Support

Web hosting providers offer different levels of customer support. This may be by phone, email or live chat and may or may not be available on a 24/7 basis.

If you are a beginner, you may need extensive support in order to help you with any questions you may have. Whereas if you’re a developer or are experienced with setting up websites and hosting, you may only need live chat support for any queries you have.

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