Posted on January 3rd, 2023.

Once you have created your website and bought your domain name, you have to host your website somewhere.  If you are not familiar with website hosting, we will explain to you what website hosting is and what your options are.

In order for a website to be viewable on the world wide web, you have to rent or buy space on a server. A server is a physical computer that connects people from anywhere in the world on the internet.

A hosting company owns such servers and has the connectivity to host websites. They are responsible that the server runs without interruptions and that your website is viewable for anyone in the world. Your website “lives” on their server, so to speak, at a digital address.

The hosting company will store all your files, assets of your website, on their server, and when someone types in your domain URL, then the hosting company will transfer over the internet everything needed to fulfill that request.  In other words, they make your website show up on the user’s computer or device.

Different kinds of website hosting:

Shared Website Hosting:
Shared website hosting means that one server is shared by many websites.  Your website shares server space with many other websites.

This is a common way of providing website hosting and most companies offer it. The advantage is that it is cheap and easy to set-up.

This is an excellent solution for new or small to medium-sized businesses that don’t have too much traffic.
Shared hosting isn’t suitable for large sites with lots of traffic. These sites need a dedicated server to accommodate a suitable amount of resources to guarantee decent website performance.

VPS Hosting:
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. If you are using VPS hosting you will still be sharing your server with other websites, but your web host has reserved an entirely separate space on the server just for you. VPS is considered one step up from shared website hosting by giving you dedicated space on a server and a reserved amount of resources and memory.

This hosting option is best suitable for small or medium-sized businesses with a rapidly growing number of websites and traffic who want the flexibility of a dedicated server but without the costs.

Dedicated Hosting:

Dedicated hosting means that your website has a dedicated server all for itself.  Although it is a much more expensive option, it will give you much more flexibility on how you want to manage your website.

You have full control over the server configuration.

This server has high reliability and security options.

Renting a dedicated server is more or less the same as owning your own on-site server. Although you get technical support from the hosting company, you will need technical and server management knowledge to operate this server. This server is only really used when a website has a lot of traffic or when more server control is required, so it is mostly for larger companies.

Cloud Hosting:

One of the latest developments in hosting is cloud hosting. With cloud hosting, your host operates across many interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, scalable and reliable web infrastructure. All your files and resources are copied on each different server that is used.

Cloud hosting is becoming extremely popular and is currently the most reliable solution on the market.

When one server encounters problems, your traffic will automatically be driven to another server in the system, so you will have a very little downtime.

This way of hosting is great for running a website with resource-intensive applications or a large number of images. The costs of cloud hosting, on the other hand, can be much higher.

WordPress Hosting:

WordPress hosting is recommended for owners of WordPress sites. It is a form of shared hosting and the server is specially configured for WordPress sites.  Also, your site comes with pre-installed plugins for things like caching and security.

It is beginner-friendly and low in cost. It has one-click installation and good performance for WordPress sites.

Reseller Hosting:

Reseller hosting is a form of website hosting in which someone can use the hard drive space and bandwidth they are the account holder of on behalf of a third party. So the third party is, in this case, the person who rents hosting space from the reseller, and the reseller can be you.

Reseller hosting can be beneficial if you don’t need all the space you bought and want to share it with another party.  This can be another source of income, and hosting companies offer specific reseller hosting plans to people interested in this kind of business.

Or such plans may be useful for anyone with multiple domains.  You may design your own hosting packages for your website.