If you’re a day-to-day user of internet, you might have seen Web-hosting somewhere on some website or some ads.
In this post we are going to talk about web-hosting only.
So what is web hosting?
According to Wiki :
‘A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows people and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web.’
Well this is little complicated. In simple words,
Suppose you made a website on html java-script/php or any language. Now you have all the html, css and jpeg files with you. You want people to see your website. This is where you’ll need web hosting.
Web hosting will make your website live on internet.
Hosting companies will give you some amount of space on their servers to upload your website’s files.
If you need to change something, you can edit it at your machine and upload it on the server, or you can log in to your server and change it from there. But in both cases the updated file should be present at the server.
You can even host a website on your machine, but for that you need :
- Linux OS.
- Static IP for your machine.
- Keep your machine on 24*7. Your website won’t accessible ff you shut down your machine.
So its better to pay few bucks and ask a web hosting company to host it for you.
Types of Hosting :
- Free hosting.
- Premium hosting.
1. Free Hosting.
- In free hosting, companies will give you limited amount of space for your website.
- You can use that space to build a website or upload your existing files.
- Free hosting websites would generally, ask you for a domain name.
Suppose you’re taking a free hosting on 5gbfree.com.
So if your username is abc123, the website address would be http://abc123.5gbfree.com.
If it is xyz then your website address will be http://xyz.5gbfree.com. - So basically what free hosting companies do is, give you a sub-domain within their space.
- Advantages :
– Free to use.
– Limited but large amount of space (generally in GB’s). - Disadvantages
– Weird ads will appear on your website.
– Website would be slow.
– You won’t get 99% up-time. It would be around 80-90%.
– Limited services (No python, ruby on rails, Perl language support).
Free hosting.
2. Premium Hosting
- In premium hosting, you pay a hosting company to host your website.
- Generally, you’ll get a free domain name with hosting.
- Hosting company gives you option to either take a Linux Server or Windows Server for hosting your website.
- You will get 99% up-time. So when you try to get access to your website, it will be available to you.
- No ads will appear on your website without your knowledge.
- Advantages :
– Unlimited Space.
– Unlimited Bandwidth.
– Secure.
– Full access to all services.
– Almost no downtime. - Disadvantages :
– You’ll have to pay to use it !
Premium hosting
If your website is doing really well, getting a lot of traffic, you can pay a little more and switch to a dedicated server.
The hosting company will then give your website a different server, which would be exclusive for your website only.
Your web hosting company can help you a lot by providing you website builder tools like WordPress, Joomla, or giving you your own mail server, providing you with your site’s statistics and many more things.
A website hosted on free hosting is slow, and lacks many features.
Which Web hosting should you go for?
- If you’re just writing blog about you, and your day-to-day activities, go for free web hosting. It would be up most of the time, plus you can share your thoughts and views for free.
- If you want to make money from websites or blogs, go for Paid hosting, because you can’t use Google Ad sense in Free hosting. Plus Ads company won’t take you seriously if your website is on free hosting.
Free hosting websites :
Free Web Hosting , 000webhost , 5gbfree , My3gb , Heliohost , Webs.
Paid Hosting websites :
GoDaddy , Ipage , Hostgator , Arvixe.