What is Web Hosting? - Types And Hosting Features

If you have created a website or a portal you need that to be visible to everyone around the world via the medium of search engines and the internet? Web hosting does that for you. 

What is Web Hosting? 

With the internet being handy, you can literally access any website or shopping portal you want in a few clicks. ‘But have you ever thought, where they are stored and what makes them visible on your phones or desktops remotely? Web hosting is the service that allows businesses and organizations to occupy a space on the World Wide Web and be accessible to anyone using the internet. 

A web hosting service provider helps you with seamless web hosting by providing the exact tech-stack and services needed to launch your business on www. The mechanism goes with the website being stored on special computers called ‘servers. Then if a person enters your website address or the domain name in the url bar, their computer/phones will connect to your server and your webpage will be delivered to them through the browser. 

With a web address or domain being in the scenario, web hosting providers help you purchase a domain at the best prices online. 

Types Of Web Hosting

Shared Hosting 

Shared hosting basically implies that you need to share a space with other users on the server. As this is a shared utility, the cost to acquire shared hosting is comparatively less than dedicated hosting. It is a feasible solution for small businesses, blogging websites or e-commerce portals until you don't mind your site activities being visible to your neighbors. Another drawback being, if someone makes a huge scripting error then the entire server might suffer. This is where people prefer dedicated hosting.   

Dedicated Hosting 

As and when your business scales, you cannot rely on shared storage anymore as it restricts you from a lot of benefits. Dedicated hosting is the solution for you when you are looking to grow your business and don't mind spending a little bit extra dollars. Now that you are in the league of big players, dedicated hosting is inevitable for you. Moreover, you need an expert (a web service hosting provider) who handles all the other tasks which leaves room in your schedule to focus on other segments of progress in your scaling business. 

Essential Features Of Web Hosting

1. Storage/disk space - to store the website.  

2. Bandwidth/data - for data being transferred every month. For shopping portals or listing sites, more data transfer is recommended.    

3. Control/admin panel - the panel that manages backend processing. 

4. Uptime - an important feature of a reliable web hosting service, uptime guarantees that the website is 99.99% of the time visible to the users.  

5. Domain name - the unique name and address on the world wide web. 

6. IP Address - IP address is the numerical address of the website that tells all the computers to find the server host  

7. Email Account - Web hosting comes packed with email services for businesses - sending customized bulk emails, unlimited storage, import/export, calendar alerts, mail forwarding, and a lot more.   

8. FTP Access - the files created on your computer needs to be transferred to your web server for which you need FTP access. 

Conclusion 

Web hosting is an inevitable deal when it comes to launching a website over the internet. And it might lead to chaos if not done wisely. If you are a layman to web hosting, there are best web hosting service providers who will help you take your business site online.