Web Hosting Services; What Are They?
If you have spent any time considering creating your own website, you have most likely heard of web hosting. But the truth is that many site owners are not completely sure what this really is. With the Internet being so widely spread nowadays, lack of knowledge in this area is hardly acceptable. This article is dedicated to give you some basic information regarding what a web hosting service is.
As a matter of fact web hosting services are just one of the many Internet services available. But it is probably the most important for those who own web sites, since it is the one that makes them available to be seen in the World Wide Web. It does not really matter whether you have a personal site with your pictures or your blog in it, or you have an online business, in any case you need this web hosting service to allow your site to be visible in the web.
The web hosting service is delivered to your disposal from the web hosts. These are the companies that provide their customers with a certain allocated disk space on which they can store the files needed for their websites. The configuration, maintenance and management of the servers, usually located in data centers, is an obligation of the web host. The way you ‘loan’ the resources needed to have your site online, is by choosing a plan from the web host and pay the amount requested for this specific plan and billing cycle.
How you can pay for the plan is the easiest part, what is more difficult is to decide which hosting company will be the right one for you. This is a continuously developing business with a lot of companies to choose from.
There are many factors that you should consider when taking the plan, but here we will only mention some.
The first one is the price. Obviously it is in our nature to go for the cheapest plan, but this might not always turn out to be the right decision. Going for the most expensive plan, also might not be your placebo, since here the price is formed based on a lot of characteristics thus price and quality are not for sure positively correlated. You should really make a big research before you make your final decision.
Another thing you should take into account is the technical part. Features such as disk space, the amount of bandwidth and memory provided, the uptime guaranteed, etc. are within the ones you should check and compare. The uptime is extremely important since it is directly connected to having your site available 24/7. Most of the companies nowadays offer values in the range of 99% to 99.9%. Choosing a company with 99.9% guarantee means that your site could be down for approximately 45 minutes per month.
There are many other factors to consider – types of support, the availability of free domain or free tools, money back guarantee, etc. In any case, choosing the hosting company is something that each person has to decide for himself/herself. It is a good idea to pick up a few companies, which you find appealing for your needs, and compare them directly. It is essential to pay attention to the type of support provided, since in case of only e-mail based support, you might find it more difficult to reach the hosting company and to receive solutions of your issues in a timely manner. What you should search for is the availability of phone or live chat support. There are many hosting companies out there waiting for you, and with a little bit of research you can find the right one for you.
Categorised in: Hosting Articles