Web hosting is an essential service that makes your website or web application accessible to internet users. Usually, web hosting is provided by web hosts. These businesses maintain physical web hosting servers.
When you purchase a hosting plan from a web hosting service provider, it means that you rent their server space to store your website data. If you need more introductory information on using web hosting before we dive deeper, read here.
Table of Contents
Types of web hosting
When it comes to using web hosting there are different forms to choose from. The right option for your project depends on your budget & preferences. For instance, a large online store with thousands of visitors per month has different hosting needs than an art portfolio website with less than a hundred visits.
Here’s a list to help you determine what type of web hosting you need:
Shared Hosting
Hailed as the best fit for most website owners, especially beginners. Despite sharing server resources with countless other sites, its affordability maintains its attractiveness. That’s because instead of paying for the entire server yourself, it’s split between the users; which works for even the smallest budget.
VPS Hosting
This type of hosting uses a technical process called virtualization to create a virtual dedicated server. However, it still needs resources from multiple physical servers shared with others. Its biggest benefit is access to far more server resources. Your site performance, across the board, will skyrocket. Moreover, you have the ability to scale your server resources up or down as you prefer.
Dedicated Hosting
You’re renting an entire physical server for yourself with no neighbouring users. This means, dedicated hosting is far costlier. However, privatizing an entire server gives you incredible levels of storage & performance. Moreover, you can completely customize it to get the most out of your website. Dedicated hosting is for websites that get massive traffic volumes
You can read our comparison of using Shared Hosting versus VPS Hosting, here.
Cloud Hosting
This hosting uniquely uses virtual hardware. Your entire hosting environment is cloud-based. This relatively new style of hosting is cost-efficient. You only pay for the server resources you actually use. Therefore, if you have variable traffic monthly, you won’t be paying for unused server resources. Also, if a cloud server cluster malfunctions, your site will be moved to another server on the network. Cloud hosting offers penultimate reliability, flexibility & cost-effectiveness through incredible uptime & unparalleled performance.
Managed WordPress Hosting
With this, you’ll get a server environment that’s 100% optimized to run on WordPress. You’re essentially hiring a team of WordPress experts to manage & maintain your server for you; helping you secure your website & get the best possible levels of performance. If your site runs on WordPress & you’re out of the initial growth stage, then investing in this style of hosting would be brilliant.
Benefits of web hosting services
The right web hosting plan can be highly beneficial. Without a proper web host, you could end up with a site that loads slowly (or not all) etc. which ruins your SEO ranking. However, choosing a high-quality host can help you avoid all that.
The reasons are countless why web hosting is important; it’s a high-quality, reliable, & professional service. Here’s a list of the top benefits you gain from using web hosting:
1. Improved Site Performance
Your site’s performance is detrimental to your online success. Truly, you only have a few seconds to capture your visitor’s attention before they give up on you. Your visitors aren’t going to stick around when your site takes forever to load. Slow loading speeds also causes your site to measure poorly in user experience metrics, which lowers your site’s search ranking. Loading speeds skyrocket with a high-quality web host.
2. Outstanding Technical Support
Efficient customer support is a highly important game changer that comes with using web hosting. When a disaster strikes, every moment your offline costs your revenue. Hopefully, you can turn to your hosting provider’s support staff & they’ll be able to bring your site back online post-haste. In this way, they’re like the technical team members you never had.
3. Domain-Associated Email Address
Quality host service providers allow you to create your own domain-specific email address. Some hosts limit you to one, while others allow you to create an unlimited number. This allows you to look professional when reaching out to people via your website. Most hosts also have a number of email management tools built-in. For example, you’ll be able to check, send, & receive emails, as well as set up email forwarders, so you can manage your emails from your preferred email provider.
4. Improved Website Security
Website security begins with the hosting provider that stores all the sites files. Quality hosts provide multiple levels of security. You have the actual guarded data center, the firewall protection on the servers themselves & possibly security measures that protect your site from other sites sharing the same server.
Moreover, you can secure your website yourself. This involves locking down your login screen, installing spam software, changing user permissions, or even installing security plugins.
Hosting with regular backups are also useful if your site gets hacked or if you accidentally crash it. In both these instances you can just restore to a previous version of your site, instead of having to troubleshoot or start over from scratch.
5. High Reliability & Uptime
Most hosting contracts have the percentage of uptime specified. Most often this number is 99.9%. Otherwise your site will be offline for maintenance. Some hosts even offer reimbursement for any unplanned downtime.
High uptime is important, otherwise people can’t access your goods or services. Evidently, the right web host can support your endeavours; while the wrong host could be your ruin.
You can read more about the benefits of using web hosting from one of our previous blogs, here.
To Conclude
There are many benefits that come with using web hosting outside of just getting your website online. Remember, your current needs should determine the type of hosting you choose. It’s always possible to switch packages or upgrade your hosting later. Get your fast and affordable web hosting options at hosting.co.uk here. To learn more about the benefits of using hosting and to find the right one for your needs ask our expert hosting support here.
