Web Hosting Providers and Your Needs:
A beginners guide for finding the best web host
What is a web hosting provider? Whenever you visit a website, what you see on your web browser is essentially just a web page that is downloaded from the web server onto your web browser. In general, a website is made up of many web pages which are composed of texts and graphic images. All these web pages need to be stored on the web servers so that online users can visit your website.
Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need a web host to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on the web server, online users can then browse your website on the Internet. A company that provides the web servers to host your website is called a web hosting provider.
A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. A web host needs many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to 'store' the websites. And all these web servers are connected to the Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a physical building called 'data center'. In order to guarantee all the web servers are safe, secure and fully operational all time, a data center is a physically secured 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.
Are there different types of web hosting offered by each web hosting provider? Yes, in fact there are different kinds of web host companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosting providers can be organized into the following categories:
a. Shared Hosting
In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting), many websites are sharing the space on the same physical web servers. Depending on the web host, a physical web server can host a few hundred to several thousand different websites at one time. You may wonder if a physical web server is shared by so many websites, will the performance of the web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers are usually equipped with high-end powerful computer, therefore it can support up to a certain number of websites without any problem. But when the web server is overloaded and exceeds the reasonable number of websites that it can support, then you will begin to experience a slower response from the web server.
However, a reputable and experienced web hosting provider will constantly monitor the performance of the web server and will add new web servers when deemed necessary, without sacrificing the benefits of the website owners. Since a physical web server is shared (disk space, computer processing power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites, the web hosting provider can therefore afford to offer a lower hosting price. For the same reason, websites on the shared hosting would have to accept slower server response time. Typically, a shared web host plans start at $3 - $20 per month.
b. Dedicated Hosting
In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hosting assigned a specific web server to be used only by one customer. Since a dedicated web host is allocated to only a single customer, the customer has the option to host single/multiple web sites, modify the software configuration, handle greater site traffic and scale the bandwidth as necessary. Therefore, dedicated hosting commands a higher premium and typically starts at $50 per month and can range up to $200 - $500 per month. As a result, dedicated hosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely important websites.
c. Co-location hosting
In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the web hosting provider and customers only rent the web server during the hosting period. While in co-location hosting, the customer owns the web server hardware and only housed their web server within the web hosting provider's secure data center. In this way, the customer has full control over their web server and simultaneously benefit from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance provided by the secure data center. Depending on the monthly bandwidth and rack space required, typically co-location hosting ranges from $500 - $1000 per month.
d. Reseller hosting
In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider's offers web server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a discounted price, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or a system integration company who resells the web hosting as an add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, web host resellers can receive up to a 50 percent discount on the price of a hosting account from the web hosting provider. And resellers are allowed to decide its own pricing structure and even establish its own branding (in other words, a reseller can setup its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web host plans under its brand).
To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the web host provider. In cases when technical problems such as server down and access problem arise, the resellers will have to correspond directly with the actual web hosting provider. Due to the communication process taken place between customer to reseller and from reseller to actual web host provider and back and forth, undoubtedly problems will take longer time to resolve. Unless you are running your own personal website or non-profit website and willing to take the risks of poor support from the reseller, reseller hosting is generally not a good option.
However, the web host market today is filled with resellers that sell lowest price web hosting plans. So, how do you tell a genuine web hosting provider from a reseller? You don't judge by the availability of toll-free number alone because some web hosting providers even give their resellers their own toll-free number for co-branded technical support. When the reseller's customer calls the number for technical support, the web host uses the reseller's name so the customer thinks that the support is coming from the reseller directly. Likewise, don't be fooled by the professional designed website alone because it is extremely easy to create a professional looked business website nowadays.
In general, web host resellers can be distinguished from their hosting price and company information. In most cases, a genuine web hosting provider has solid company information. In contrast, resellers usually do not have solid company background (here is just an example out of thousands out there). So, why settle for resellers when you can find genuine web hosting providers offering superb quality very low web hosting prices?
Therefore, you should not strive to find the lowest price web hosting provider without first considering the quality of the service and support provided. Don't expect to find any top-level support if you choose to pay only $2 or $3 per months for your web host plan. On the other hand, by paying just slightly more for your hosting plan, you can now discover a list of low cost yet high quality plans from a good web hosting provider to host your important website.