Introduction of Web Hosting
If you want to do online business, you must need website. Everybody wants to make their own website. In order to make it live, you will need web hosting service. Web hosting service provides you web space, where you can host your website.
Limitations and Features of Free Web Hosting
Many hosting service providers provide free web hosting service. So they are not charging a dime to you. These free web hosting service providers make money by placing ads on your web site. There are also many technical limitations in free web hosting. Free web hosting is not recommended for professional sites. You can use free hosting for hosting your personal web sites.
Shared & Dedicated Web Hosting
Paid web hosting is necessary to host your business web site. You can’t trust free hosting for that. Paid web hosting comes in two forms. 1) Dedicated Web Hosting & 2) Shared Web Hosting. In dedicated web hosting, you get the full server access. Your web site is hosted on your own server. In shared web hosting, you share the server resources with many other sites. Dedicated hosting is much more costly than shared web hosting.
Features of Web Hosting
There are many components of web hosting. Web hosting space and bandwidth are main components of web hosting. Some other factors to consider are more than one domain hosting, FTP and SSH access, PHP , reliability, customer support and of course price. One can select best web hosting for him based on these factors.
What is Web Space & Bandwidth
Web hosting space is provided in unit of bytes. Most of hosting providers provide Giga Bytes(GB) of space. Some web hosting services even provide unlimited web space. If the web site is very big then it requires Giga bytes of space. Most web sites fit in 3 GB of space. Bandwidth is a measure of data transfer. Now a days, web hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth.
Domains Hosting
Many web hosting providers provide unlimited domain hosting. It means you can host as many websites as you like. Some service plans have limited domain hosting. You can select your service provider based on your requirement.
File Transfer Protocol & Secure Shall
When you subscribe to an web hosting account, you get an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access. FTP is used to upload your web site pages to the server. SSH (Secure Shall) is a protocol which you use to login to your server. After logging in to your server, you can directly edit, delete or create a new file. Only few web hosting providers give you SSH access.
PHP and Extensions
PHP support is a basic need in today’s web sites. Web sites are not mealy static pages. You can generate dynamic pages with PHP support. PHP creates life in your web site. You also get many different PHP extensions installed. Even some web hosts allow you to change PHP extension settings.
Uptime & Response Time of Web Host
You need to decide also the reliability of the server. This is measured in uptime and the response time of the server. Web host should provide quick response time of the page requested on your web site. Also the uptime should be higher than 99.9%. If you are getting less up time than 98% then you need to change your web host.
Customer Support
Customer support is also an important factor to consider. You need to have good customer service to generate good user experience. All web hosts provide 24×7 supports by email. Some do provide instant online support and only few provide phone support. Support is also an important factor while purchasing hosting service.
Cost of Web Hosting
Last thing you need to look at is price. Shared hosting services are very cheap. You get shared hosting account from $2 to $10 per month price. Dedicated hosting is very costly. It will cost you $100 to $150 per month.