Perhaps the most silent foundation of the internet is web hosting. Everything you enjoy about the internet, including websites, online gaming, podcasts, memes, articles, tweets, and content from Netflix and YouTube, is stored on servers maintained and paid for by individuals or businesses to access it. Put, web hosting is a crucial yet unseen component of the internet experience.
Before beginning a website-building endeavor, there are a few fundamental web hosting factors that you should be aware of if you’re thinking about developing one. While using the website-building software provided by the provider to quickly develop an eye-catching, useful front end is rather simple, there are a lot of related phrases and concepts to learn. Some of it is unclear, if not contradictory, as you’ll soon discover. Before creating an account, make sure you understand the following regarding web hosting.
The Different Types of Hosting Differ Significantly
You’ve undoubtedly come across words like shared, VPS, dedicated, cloud, WordPress, and reseller if you’ve spent any time on a web host’s website. They stand for the various kinds of online hosting; however, not all web hosts provide them. Furthermore, there are notable differences between the various forms of hosting.
The most affordable type of web hosting, shared hosting, is provided by almost all web hosts. Your website shares a server and its resources with numerous other websites when you use shared hosting. Shared hosting is the best option if your web hosting budget is tight and you don’t anticipate high traffic volumes. This web hosting package should cost you $10 or less per month. Because you’re sharing resources with other websites, if one of them gets a lot of traffic, you should be ready for the occasional slowdown. If money is tight, you can get free web hosting, however, there are significant limitations (usually advertisements and very low server specs).
Larger companies should choose dedicated or VPS hosting, as both offer progressively more powerful server specifications if they anticipate high site traffic. Similar to a more powerful variation of shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) hosting allows for significantly fewer websites to share a server’s resources, which are also more segregated. Although VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting, the monthly cost should still be under $100.
With dedicated hosting, your website is hosted on a separate server, allowing it to utilize all of the resources on that machine. This is the priciest kind of hosting; the monthly cost could reach $100 or more for this unprocessed power.
Data Transfer Is Not the Same as Bandwidth
Although the phrases “bandwidth” and “data transfer” are commonly used synonymously to describe the quantity of data that visitors to your website get, they have different meanings in theory.
The total amount of data that can be transferred at once is represented by bandwidth. On the other hand, data transfer refers to the throughput or maximum amount of information that can be utilized in a specific amount of time, usually one month. Consider this: a web host might have a 5GB bandwidth limit, but your site might only allow 1GB of data transfers per month based on your hosting subscription.
There Is No Such Thing as Unlimited
Web hosts use alluring features like unlimited storage or monthly data transfers to lure you into signing up for their hosting plans. Usually, it’s not an entirely sincere transaction. The claims of “unlimited” data transport or storage almost always include restrictions that change from company to provider. For instance, FatCow promises “oodles” of disk space and says there’s no limit on user material, provided the user abides by the terms of service and uses the storage “for the normal operation of your FatCow website.” It’s similar to the never-ending shrimp buffet in that restaurants will eventually cut you off if they don’t run out of shrimp first.
Usually connected with shared or WordPress services, unlimited storage, and data transfers allow you to go wild—within reason. If your blog receives a consistent flow of respectable visitors, you should be fine (whatever that may imply!). You shouldn’t anticipate uploading or streaming 50 terabytes of data every day, though. With such high data usage, the typical Jane is probably indulging in some dubious activities, and the corporation will probably report you for it.
The Trade-Off Between Solid-State and Hard Disk Drives
If you choose to register for shared web hosting, you will probably be given space on a conventional hard disk drive (HDD) server. An HDD-based server has the benefit of being able to provide enormous volumes of storage at a low cost. Web hosts allow you to establish a website on a solid-state drive (SSD) as you go up the hosting ladder to more powerful solutions like VPS and dedicated hosting.
SSD-based servers are extremely quick storage devices. However, SSD-based servers usually have much lesser total storage capacities than HDDs because SSD technology is still quite expensive. While 1TB SSD servers are very widespread in the HDD market, you won’t find many of them elsewhere.
A Linux server will work just as well.Most of the Time
Linux is the operating system that powers the servers of almost all web hosts. We haven’t, I believe, examined a web host that didn’t have the open-source, free operating system. To develop a website, you don’t need to perform any extra work on the back end, even if you’re not familiar with Linux. Creating websites is easy using website builders.
That being stated, your website requires the Windows Server operating system if it uses the ASP or ASP.NET scripting frameworks. This is due to the fact that the webpages and scripts you create will only work in an environment that runs Windows.
Another advantage is that Microsoft programs, including Office and Outlook, may be seamlessly integrated with the server. The drawback? Unless you modify it, Linux-based, open-source software cannot be used with Windows servers. Furthermore, Windows servers are roughly $10 to $20 more expensive than their Linux counterparts, although that is a little increase if you want Microsoft’s tools. Everything you need to know about Linux and Windows is broken down in How to Choose the Best Server OS for Your Website.