A professionally designed website is an essential tool that your business needs to succeed today; however, before you can even think about website development, you need to decide on website hosting.
Web hosting is the first step in the process of having a great website, but not every host is created equal.
It’s important that you understand the differences in the various types of hosting available to you and choose the best one for your needs.
The right web host can make everything from website maintenance and regular site updating to providing a user-friendly site for your visitors easier.
What Is A Web Host?
As magical as accessing a website at merely a tap or click of a key or mouse might seem, you can do this because every site has its files stored on servers owned and provided by a web host.
Therefore, a web host is a company that maintains a group of servers for hosting other people’s websites and charges a rental fee for that space.
Once you have subscribed to hosting, website development for your site can begin.
What Are the Different Types of Web Hosting?
Getting the best results with your business website starts with choosing the right hosting to provide you with the features you need to handle your customers and website maintenance easily and effectively:
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Shared Hosting - This is a server that is rented out to multiple customers to host multiple websites. It is a very cost-effective and popular hosting method, although site speed and ability to handle large amounts of traffic could become an issue.
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Dedicated Hosting - A server that is rented to your business alone is considered dedicated hosting. It is a more costly hosting method but ensures the best service for your site, can be designed to handle all of your traffic, and makes website updates and maintenance much faster and easier.
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VPS Hosting - Virtual Private Servers are the next best thing to dedicated hosting as they are more economical while providing almost the same benefit. They are a shared main server that’s broken down into numerous private sectors, each one designed to host one site only.
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Cloud Hosting - Growing in popularity as it offers better traffic control at a lower cost, cloud hosting is like shared hosting except your site is hosted over multiple servers to handle traffic spikes and other performance issues.
What Services Do Web Hosts Provide?
In addition to deciding which type of hosting will work best for your site, you should discuss site requirements with your website developer so you can subscribe to a hosting plan that provides the services you need to keep things running smoothly.
While every package will include the basic features of a control panel, a certain amount of server space, FTP/SFTP access, install features, a file manager, site backup, and more, there are more complete packages that offer additional features like add-on domains, more server space, guaranteed faster site speeds, additional server space, email hosting, expanded user support features, and much more.
Business Websites Need A Great Web Host
In order to compete in the current market, you must have a website that caters to your customers and gets your business out there.
Succeeding requires a great site design that’s hosted with the right hosting service.
A great hosting plan ensures your site will run efficiently and all web maintenance and updates will happen without issue, reducing downtime and lag.
The more efficiently your website runs, the more sales your business can make!
