What are website hosting services and how to Choose a Hosting Service Provider. (Step#2)

A website host (or sometimes referred to as a website hosting provider) is a company that offers the technology and services necessary for a website to be viewed on the internet. You connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when users visit the website you have built for your business.

Look at your hosting services as a rental property. You lease a home or apartment which is the property where you will be living. Once you find the correct property that meets your needs you go in with the process of the lease of the property. Once finalized the process you start moving in. You put all of your furniture and items within your new property. A property that you will now call home. It’s the same application when building a website for your business. You lease your online space (Get hosting services.) then you start moving in. You start uploading all of your content and finally once ready connect your domain name.

What's important in a hosting provider?

Great hosting boils down to the 4 S's: speed, support, scalable, and security. You need the ability to rapidly scale your website as your target audience grows and the resiliency to handle sudden bursts of high traffic.

Hosting services are available in a wide range of prices ranging from a few dollars a month to thousands of dollars. If you're a small business getting started, you can probably do quite well with a cloud, virtual private server, or managed service ranging from $10 to $100 (per month.) The cost depends on the ty of server you choose features such as technology, hardware, and support you choose. You can usually get a discount if you purchase a yearly plan as opposed to a monthly plan.

Here are the different types of servers:

Shared Server

Shared hosting means you are sharing a server and its resources with other customers, which can make the performance of your site suffer. Also, if one of the other websites on your shared server is hacked, it is possible for your website to also be infected.

Dedicated Server

Choosing a dedicated server plan means that the physical server machine is entirely dedicated to your site; therefore, all the resources are yours and it is more secure than a shared hosting plan, as long as the technology is optimal. However, it is much more expensive than what most small businesses usually are willing to pay. Once you have a very high-performing site, this may be what you need, but it is overkill for most early-stage and small businesses.

Virtual Private Server” (VPS)

VPS is a hosting plan which offers the best of both worlds between a shared server and a dedicated server. A VPS is one machine that is partitioned to act like multiple machines, which gives it similar affordability to shared hosting, with similar security and performance potential as a dedicated server hosting plan.

Cloud Servers

Cloud Servers usually run on the giant public clouds, like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Service providers can build whatever configuration suits the needs of their customers. The big benefit of cloud servers is that you can scale seamlessly. If you need to be able to handle that big traffic surge, just pay your provider more money. Nothing needs to be moved or rebuilt.

Once you have chosen what type of server you will be using it's time to research a hosting provider. Here are is some advice when choosing your hosting service provider.

• Decide how much space you will be needing.

• Estimate how much traffic you will be expecting to your website.

• Make sure the company has reliable support.

• Ask about their interface and how easy it is to use.

• Make sure they have security (SSL) enabled on your hosting.

A word of advice... Be wary of unlimited offers.

Some hosting providers offer so-called unlimited storage and bandwidth for a few dollars a month. This deal often isn't what it seems to be. If you pay three bucks a month for hosting, there will likely be something in your terms of service allowing your hosting provider to either throttle your performance or shut you down after a certain usage level.

If you are ae in the process of building your website feel free to reach out and schedule a consultation. Simply visit my contact page and submit a form.