A Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting

What is web hosting? Whenever you visit a website,typically starts at $50 per month and can range up to
what you see on your web browser is essentially$200 - $500 per month. As a result, dedicated
just a web page that is downloaded from the webhosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely
server onto your web browser. In general, a webimportant website.
site is made up of many web pages. And a webCo-location hosting
page is basically composed of texts and graphicIn dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the
images. All these web pages need to be stored onweb hosting providers and customers only rent the
the web servers so that online users can visit yourweb server during the hosting period. While in
website.co-location hosting, the customer owns the web
Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, youserver hardware and only housed their web server
will need to host your website on a web server.within the web hosting provider's secure data center.
When your website goes live on the web server,In this way, the customer has full control over their
online users can then browse your website on theweb server and simultaneously benefit from the 24/7
Internet. Company that provides the web servers toserver monitoring and maintenance provided by the
host your website is called web hosting providers.secure data center. Depending on the monthly
A well-established web hosting provider sometimesbandwidth and rack space required, typically
hosts up to thousands of websites. For example,co-location hosting range from $500 - $1000 per
iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company thatmonth.
hosts more than 300,000 websites. For that reason,Reseller hosting
a web hosting company need many web serversIn reseller hosting, a web hosting provider offers
(essentially, these are computers) to 'store' theweb server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a
website. And all these web servers are connected todiscount price, who then resell the web server
the Internet through high speed Internet connectionstorage to their customers. Typically, resellers are
and housed in a physical building called 'data center'. Inweb consultants including web designers, web
order to guarantee all the web servers are safe,developers, or system integration company who
secure and fully operational all time, a data center is aresell the web hosting as a add-on service to
physically secure 24/7 environment with firecomplement their other range of services. Commonly,
protection, HVAC temperature control, virusresellers can receive up to 50 percent discount on
detections, computer data backup, redundant powerthe price of a hosting account from the web hosting
backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.provider. And resellers are allowed to decide its own
What are the different types of web hosting?pricing structure and even establish its own branding
There are different kinds of web hosting companies(in other words, reseller setup its web hosting
out there with different characteristics. The maincompany on the Internet and start selling web
types of web hosts can be organized into thehosting plans under its brand).
following categories:To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the web
Shared Hostinghost provider. In cases when technical problems such
In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting),as server down and access problem arise, the
many websites are sharing the space on the sameresellers will have to correspond directly with the
physical web servers. Depending on the web host, aactual web host provider. Due to the communication
physical web server can hosts a few hundred toprocess taken place between customer to reseller
even thousand of different websites at one time.and from reseller to actual web host provider and
You may wonder if a physical web server is sharedback and forth, undoubtedly problems will take longer
by so many websites, will the performance of thetime to resolve. Unless you are running your own
web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers arepersonal website or non-profit website and willing to
usually equipped with high-end powerful computer,take the risks of poor support from the reseller,
therefore it can support up to a certain number ofreseller hosting is generally not a good option.
websites without any problem. But when the webHowever, the web hosting market today is filled with
server is overloaded and exceeded the reasonableresellers that sell lowest price web hosting plans. So,
number of websites that it can support, then you willhow do you tell between a genuine web hosting
begin to experience a slower response from the webprovider from a reseller? You don't judge by the
server.availability of toll-free number alone because some
However, a reputable and experience web hostingweb hosting providers even offer their resellers with
provider will constantly monitor the performance oftheir own toll-free number for co-branded technical
the web server and will add new web servers whensupport. When the reseller's customer calls the
deem necessary without sacrificing the benefits ofnumber for technical support, the web host uses the
the website owners. Since a physical web server isreseller's name so the customer thinks that the
shared (diskspace, computer processing power,support is coming from the reseller directly. Likewise,
bandwidth, memory) by many websites, the webdon't be fooled by the professional designed website
hosting provider can therefore afford to offer aalone because it is extremely easy to create a
lower hosting price. For the same reason, websitesprofessional looked business website nowadays.
on the shared hosting would have to accept slowerIn general, resellers can be distinguished from their
server response time. Typically, shared hosting planshosting price and company information. In most
start at $5 - $20 per month.cases, a genuine web hosting provider has solid
Dedicated Hostingcompany information such as where they publish its
In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hostingfinancial background, offices and data centers. In
assigned a specific web server to be used only bycontrast, resellers usually do not have solid company
one customer. Since a dedicated web server isbackground (here is just an example out of
allocated to only a single customer, the customer hasthousands out there). Moreover, the hosting price by
the option to host single/multiple web sites, modifyresellers is generally below $5 per month. So, why
the software configuration, handle greater site trafficsettle for resellers when you can find genuine web
and scale the bandwidth as necessary. Therefore,hosting providers offering superb quality web hosting
dedicated hosting commands a higher premium andat the hosting price ranging between $7 - $10.