What is Web Hosting and What are Common Types of Web Hosting Plans?

What is Web hosting?

A normal question for someone who does not have a website is: What is web hosting? It is important to understand what is web hosting. The Internet has transformed our world to such an extent that almost all businesses, and many individuals, need to have their own website. At Website Hosting Store, our goal is to make it possible for you to have your own website. We have cost-effective plans tailored to meet the needs of individuals and businesses, large or small.

The World Wide Web

If you want to have your own website, then you need a way to make your website visible to the world. In other words, your website’s files and data must be physically stored on a computer that is always connected to the Internet. Hosting your website at home on your own computer is not practical because most homes would not have the infrastructure and bandwidth to accommodate the numerous potential connections made by visitors to a website.  Nor would you want the whole world poking around your computer.  It would be like leaving your front door unlocked and the door wide open all day and all night. So, the answer to the question, what is web hosting is as follows.  Web hosting  is the business of providing the infrastructure, technologies and services needed for your website to be viewed on the Internet.

Web Servers or Data Centers

The large, high-powered computers that are always connected to the internet are called web servers.  Companies that physically house several web servers in one, or multiple locations, are knowns as website hosts.  These large computers or servers in a particular location or are sometimes referred to as data centers. In addition to housing the web servers, or data centers, website hosts provide the software, security, support, and bandwidth that connects your website to the internet.

 

Website Hosting Store – An Internet Shopping Mall

Now that we know what is web hosting, let us explore a little more about what website hosting companies do. Think of a website hosting company as a shopping center or mall that contains many individual stores. If you want to open a store at that mall, you would normally lease space there and set up shop. Just like a shopping mall, a website hosting company allows you to lease space on a web servers. Just like you can put your products on a shelf in a store for shoppers to come in and browse,  a web server is a place where you can store your website files and make them available for visitors to browse on the Internet.

Web Hosting Plans – Get What You Need

To accommodate all the various types of websites and customer needs, there are a variety of web hosting plans or solutions for businesses and individuals. Hosting packages or solutions are broadly categorized based on the amount of server space you need for your website files and the monthly amount of bandwidth your site uses.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data being transferred, or the amount of resource usage your website requires. This is closely linked to how well known your website is and how many visitors it gets. Let’s look at your shop again… Suppose you sell only printed Tee shirts for a local baseball team. Then, you have a small, simple product offering. With a small product offering like that, you don’t need, nor want, to lease the same amount of space as a big clothing store. Instead, you could lease a smaller boutique in the shopping center that gives you just enough space for your tee shirts and costs less money.

Server Space

Additionally, because you’re a small shop you don’t need a lot of extra technology or staff to help you sell your product like a department store requires. Between you and your mobile payment device, you have plenty of bandwidth to take care of your customers, and don’t need to buy any extra technology or hire more employees. Make sense? Beyond server space and bandwidth, there are other things to consider when selecting a hosting solution: your budget, ease of use or complexity of solution, the level of flexibility or customization the solution allows, as well as privacy and security features.

Types of Web Hosting Plans

Website Hosting Store offers hosting solutions to fit every user and budget. Website Hosting Store offers Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Servers or VPS, and Dedicated Servers. To determine which of these hosting solutions best suits your needs, click on the appropriate link for a description of the features and plans available in each hosting solution.  Also, you can explore more posts or view videos about hosting and other topics, here on Website Hosting Store.

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Check out which website hosting plan is for you.