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A Beginners Guide to Web Hosting
What is web hosting? Whenever you visit a
website, what you see on your web browser is
essentially just a web page that is
downloaded from the web server onto your web
browser. In general, a web site is made up
of many web pages. And a web page is
basically composed of texts and graphic
images. All these web pages need to be
stored on the web servers so that online
users can visit your website.
Therefore, if you plan to own a new website,
you will need to host your website on a web
server. When your website goes live on the
web server, online users can then browse
your website on the Internet. Company that
provides the web servers to host your
website is called web hosting providers.
A well-established web hosting provider
sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites.
For example, iPowerWeb is a popular web
hosting company that hosts more than 300,000
websites. For that reason, a web hosting
company need many web servers (essentially,
these are computers) to 'store' the website.
And all these web servers are connected to
the Internet through high speed Internet
connection and housed in a physical building
called 'data center'. In order to guarantee
all the web servers are safe, secure and
fully operational all time, a data center is
a physically secure 24/7 environment with
fire protection, HVAC temperature control,
virus detections, computer data backup,
redundant power backup and complete disaster
recovery capabilities.
What are the different types of web hosting?
There are different kinds of web hosting
companies out there with different
characteristics. The main types of web hosts
can be organized into the following
categories:
Shared Hosting
In shared hosting (also known as virtual web
hosting), many websites are sharing the
space on the same physical web servers.
Depending on the web host, a physical web
server can hosts a few hundred to even
thousand of different websites at one time.
You may wonder if a physical web server is
shared by so many websites, will the
performance of the web server deteriorate?
In fact, web servers are usually equipped
with high-end powerful computer, therefore
it can support up to a certain number of
websites without any problem. But when the
web server is overloaded and exceeded the
reasonable number of websites that it can
support, then you will begin to experience a
slower response from the web server.
However, a reputable and experience web
hosting provider will constantly monitor the
performance of the web server and will add
new web servers when deem necessary without
sacrificing the benefits of the website
owners. Since a physical web server is
shared (diskspace, computer processing
power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites,
the web hosting provider can therefore
afford to offer a lower hosting price. For
the same reason, websites on the shared
hosting would have to accept slower server
response time. Typically, shared hosting
plans start at $5 - $20 per month.
Dedicated Hosting
In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated
hosting assigned a specific web server to be
used only by one customer. Since a dedicated
web server is allocated to only a single
customer, the customer has the option to
host single/multiple web sites, modify the
software configuration, handle greater site
traffic and scale the bandwidth as
necessary. Therefore, dedicated hosting
commands a higher premium and typically
starts at $50 per month and can range up to
$200 - $500 per month. As a result,
dedicated hosting is regularly used by high
traffic and extremely important website.
Co-location hosting
In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs
to the web hosting providers and customers
only rent the web server during the hosting
period. While in co-location hosting, the
customer owns the web server hardware and
only housed their web server within the web
hosting provider's secure data center. In
this way, the customer has full control over
their web server and simultaneously benefit
from the 24/7 server monitoring and
maintenance provided by the secure data
center. Depending on the monthly bandwidth
and rack space required, typically
co-location hosting range from $500 - $1000
per month.
Reseller hosting
In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider
offers web server storage to third-party
(i.e. reseller) at a discount price, who
then resell the web server storage to their
customers. Typically, resellers are web
consultants including web designers, web
developers, or system integration company
who resell the web hosting as a add-on
service to complement their other range of
services. Commonly, resellers can receive up
to 50 percent discount on the price of a
hosting account from the web hosting
provider. And resellers are allowed to
decide its own pricing structure and even
establish its own branding (in other words,
reseller setup its web hosting company on
the Internet and start selling web hosting
plans under its brand).
To the reseller's customers, the reseller is
the web host provider. In cases when
technical problems such as server down and
access problem arise, the resellers will
have to correspond directly with the actual
web host provider. Due to the communication
process taken place between customer to
reseller and from reseller to actual web
host provider and back and forth,
undoubtedly problems will take longer time
to resolve. Unless you are running your own
personal website or non-profit website and
willing to take the risks of poor support
from the reseller, reseller hosting is
generally not a good option.
However, the web hosting market today is
filled with resellers that sell lowest price
web hosting plans. So, how do you tell
between a genuine web hosting provider from
a reseller? You don't judge by the
availability of toll-free number alone
because some web hosting providers even
offer their resellers with their own
toll-free number for co-branded technical
support. When the reseller's customer calls
the number for technical support, the web
host uses the reseller's name so the
customer thinks that the support is coming
from the reseller directly. Likewise, don't
be fooled by the professional designed
website alone because it is extremely easy
to create a professional looked business
website nowadays.
In general, resellers can be distinguished
from their hosting price and company
information. In most cases, a genuine web
hosting provider has solid company
information such as iPowerWeb.com where they
publish its financial background, offices
and data centers. In contrast, resellers
usually do not have solid company background
(here is just an example out of thousands
out there). Moreover, the hosting price by
resellers is generally below $5 per month.
So, why settle for resellers when you can
find genuine web hosting providers offering
superb quality web hosting at the hosting
price ranging between $7 - $10.
Therefore, you should not strive to find the
cheap web hosting companies without first
considering the quality of the service and
support provided. Don't expect to find any
top-level support if you choose to pay only
$2 or $3 per months for your web hosting
plan. On the other hand, by paying just
slightly more for your hosting plan, you can
now discover a list of low cost yet high
quality web hosting plans to host your
important website. Look at our high quality
and cheap web hosting review and
recommendation at http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com/top5.shtml
Andrew Loh is the owner of Cheap Web
Hosting, a website that provide complete and
detailed review of cheap web hosting
reviews. Visit his website at: http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com
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