Table of Contents
What is web hosting?
Whenever you visit a website, what you see on your web browser is essentially just a web page that is downloaded from the webserver onto your web browser. In general, a website is made up of many web pages. And a web page is basically composed of texts and graphic images. All these web pages need to be stored on web servers so that online users can visit your website.
Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on the webserver, online users can then browse your website on the Internet. A company that provides the web servers to host your website is called web hosting providers.
A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. For example, the ‘Best Web Host of the Year 2003’ award winner, iPowerWeb, is a web hosting company that hosts more than 200,000 websites. For that reason, a web hosting company need many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to ‘store’ the website. And all these web servers are connected to the Internet through a 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 secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup, and complete disaster recovery capabilities.
What are the different types of web hosting?
There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts 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 hosts a few hundred to even thousands of 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 the 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 exceeded 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 deeming 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, shared hosting plans start at $5 – $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 server is allocated to only a single customer, the customer has the option to host single/multiple websites, 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 website.
c. Co-location hosting
In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the web hosting providers 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 range from $500 – $1000 per month.
d. What’s VPS Web Hosting?
A: VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is a hosting plan that divides a large web server and its resources between literally hundreds of sites at the same time, conveying enhanced performance to each web site. In contrast to shared hosting plans, VPS hosting plans come with wide ranging server resources and the ability to make adjustments to software and server configuration.
Often, VPS hosting is utilized by businesses or busy websites and is regarded as the ideal solution for those on a strict budget that need effective, yet inexpensive hosting. VPS hosting, when compared to dedicated hosting plans, does not differ much in terms of effectiveness. However, VPS is much more affordable and quite expandable, making it simple to upgrade if need be.
e. What are Dedicated Hosting Plans?
Dedicated hosting plans allow you to lease a private server that is only utilized by your sites. Dedicated hosting is superior to shared hosting, in that it has less limitations and added features that are made available to its users.
A dedicated server gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, and it is rare to see the server’s resources depleted. Dedicated web hosting is regarded as the most powerful and sought after web hosting on the market. This is mainly because it is the only plan that allows you to lease your own private server, without sharing resources with any other website.
While it is quite a bit more expensive, with a dedicated server, hundreds of your own sites can be hosted at the same time without sacrificing one bit of functionality.
f. What’s eCommerce Hosting?
A: eCommerce is a specific type of hosting that is created especially for online stores. eCommerce hosting plans provide all of the tools and resources one will need in order to build a lucrative store online.
A few of the things offered with eCommerce hosting plans are: payment processing abilities, shopping carts, and catalog builders. The vast majority of online stores use eCommerce web hosting to effectively keep track of billing and invoicing.
eCommerce hosting adds an aspect of simplicity when it comes to creating proficient stores, even with little to no previous experience or training. eCommerce allows you to create online retail storefronts that can easily contend with larger corporate stores. If you would like to increase your chances of having a successful online store, then eCommerce is the way to go.
g. Reseller hosting
In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider offers web server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a discount price, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or system integration company who resell the web hosting as an add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, resellers can receive up to 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, reseller setup its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting 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 host provider. Due to the communication process has taken place between customer to reseller and from reseller to actual web host provider and back and forth, undoubtedly problems will take a 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 hosting market today is filled with resellers that sell lowest price web hosting plans. So, how do you tell between 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 offer their resellers with 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 professionally designed website alone because it is extremely easy to create a professional looked business website nowadays.
In general, resellers can be distinguished from their hosting price and company information. In most cases, a genuine web hosting provider has solid company information such as iPowerWeb.com where they publish its financial background, offices and data centers. In contrast, resellers usually do not have a solid company background (here is just an example out of thousands out there). Moreover, the hosting price by resellers is generally below $5 per month. So, why settle for resellers when you can find genuine web hosting providers offering superb quality web hosting at the hosting price ranging between $7 – $10.
Therefore, you should not strive to find the lowest price web hosting companies 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 hosting 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 web hosting plans to host your important website.
How To Choose A Web Hosting Company
Our Affordable Hosting Web review can help you to find a cheap, professional and good quality web hosting provider. Good Web Hosting provider can help you to develop your web pages, online marketing support. Choosing a web host is like choosing a service provider in any other industry–if you understand what you need and what is being offered, your decision will be much easier to make. We would provide useful pieces of information to help you to choose the best web hosting provider. Does your affordable hosting web company offer telephone support or 24/7 email support?
24/7 Email support is always nice to have available, they can reply to you within 1-2 hours. And you can talk about your problem with customers service in telephone support.
2. What sort of history does the company have? How long has this company been in business?
Please read their company profile from their web page. How long has this company been in business? How many users of this company? A lot of the larger hosting businesses will post customer testimonials on their site to reinforce the message.
3. What software does the company offer?
Control Panel – Including statistics, webmail, adding email account, file manager, Database management, etc.
Free Scripts Provided – Some web hosting provides free scripts to users. The user can install the scripts through a control panel. Major Free Scripts – Oscommerce, Phpnuke, Phpbb, Moodle, Phpwebsite, Xoops, etc.
4. Fees.
Please check their service plan carefully before signing up. I think that you can find more than one web hosting to compare their packages.
I suggest that you need to read their “terms and conditions” and refund conditions.
5. Marketing Service
Some web hosting provides search engine submission to their customers. And they can provide pay per click service to their customer.
11 question to ask before choosing a web hosting
Q. Which is the platform of web hosting(Win, Unix or Linux.etc)
Q. How reliable is the service of a web host?
Q. What kind of performance can I expect?
Q. How good is email and phone support?
Q. How much will it cost me?
Q. How much bandwidth will I need for data transfer?
Q. What about a control panel?
Q. What about a POP3 account?
Q. What about anti-spam and viruses features?
Q. What about running my own online store?
Q. What about Online Marketing Support?
Top Web Hosting Companies
If you are new to web hosting and are looking for a low budget hosting plan, there are a couple of choices. There is cheap web hosting and free hosting. Cheap web hosting is always recommended over free hosting if you are able to afford the investment. Take a look at the top 10 web hosting sites on this website.
The reason for this is due to its reliability and the company’s reliability. When paying for services, asking about reliability is a given. However, when going with a free service, you might not think to ask about it, and often free hosting companies come and go leaving you without hosting. If you are using a free hosting company to host your website and it shuts down, you are not able to ask for compensation. In addition, you end up having to redo all the work you have previously done in building your site. By using a paid hosting service, you do get some type of reliability, although limited.
Web hosting providers use advertisements to earn their revenue. However, the free providers do not allow you to have any control over these ads. They are able to place an ad they want on your website and there is nothing you can do, which has a bad effect on the growth of your business. With cheap hosting services, ad placement can be controlled. You are able to make the choice on where you want the ads placed.
Also, free hosting providers put a limit on the different kinds of files they allow on their server as well as how much space may be used. With cheap paid hosting, this limit is decided on from the start. Finally, cheap paid hosting offers the option of making an upgrade to your server which you do not get with free hosting. The choice here is pretty obvious.
How this Website Reviewed Web hosts
To ensure the web servers are secure, fully operational and safe at all times, these data centers come with 24/7 HVAC temperature control, fire protection, computer data backup, virus detection, complete disaster recovery, and redundant power backup capabilities. Website hosting companies have a huge number of web servers to provide space for thousands of websites. Below are some things to take into consideration when looking into website hosting
Disk Space
When you contact a hosting provider, the first thing you will want to ask about is how much space you will be renting for storing your website. Typically, this is measured in Gigabytes (GB) or Megabytes (MB).In many cases, there is unlimited server space on plans. In order to get the correct amount of space, you will need to provide the hosting provider with your website requirements.
Bandwidth Allocation
Finally, your website traffic is another important thing to discuss. This amount measures in gigabytes monthly. Every time a visitor arrives at your site, your website pages are downloaded to the visitor’s web browser from the server. The bandwidth is the amount of data transferred and in some cases will have an upper limit, however, usually, most web hosting companies offer an unlimited amount.
To come up the list of top 10 web hosting, we have reviewed and ranked 100+ web hosts in according to the following main criteria. The review and ranking are based on our real hosting experience and the verified customer reviews. All the listed companies provide reliable web hosting services with an array of advanced features at a low rate.
Reliability & Speed
Reliability and speed are of vital importance when ranking the top 10 web hosting. After all, the slowness and unexpected downtime greatly affect the traffic of websites, and sometimes even result in revenue lost for business. Thus, customers need to choose a web host offering great hosting performance with at least 99.9% uptime and fast page loading speed averages no more than 1 second.
Customer Service
It is unwise to underestimate the importance of customer service. Everyone may encounter some problems when setting up and managing the websites, especially for the new beginners. The top 10 web hosts provide customers with an excellent problem shooting process which includes pre-sale inquiries and after-sale technical support via a variety of methods such as toll-free phone call, e-mail, support ticket system, and live chat day and night.
Features
The top web hosting company needs to offer useful and competitive features, which enable customers to create, publish and maintain their websites, including unlimited disk space & bandwidth, free website builder, 1-click installer, user-friendly control panel (particularly cPanel), the latest versions of script engines, etc. Besides, customers need to check out the features in advance based on their explicit requirements to avoid a web host that provides a long list of useless features, but cannot fully function the websites.
Price Value
Price is the top concern for some cost-sensitive customers who may choose the extremely cheap or even free web hosting service to save budget. However, these hosting solutions are often full of sucks and scams. The top 10 web hosting companies may not be the cheapest in the market, but they offer a great balance between cost and quality, allowing customers to enjoy a quality hosting service without spending too much.
Top UK Web Hosting Companies
When you are working with hosting, there are often times, ways to be able to host the website through a reliable company. When you are looking for these, you need to have a special technique if you are going to be able to have the right one the first time around. In the UK and around the world, web hosting is what makes the website what it is. Getting revenue from an outside source is going to make things better. The Top 5 UK web hosting companies are:
5. 123Reg – Although this is on the expensive side when it comes to hosting, you are getting a lot more than the other companies that have their prices set too low. You have a 5 GB space limit and a 50 GB bandwidth. This is enough for most users nowadays. It makes sense if you are going to have this type of necessity.
4. FatCow – Here you have everything unlimited with a free for life policy. With the rating of 94% in many areas, you are going to be able to have a lot of things that are going to make your site shine the way it should.
3. FastHosts – With 15GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth, there is a lot to look to when it comes to web hosting. When you have many things to deal with in your server, you want something that is going to make you more comfortable. It is always good to get something that you don’t have to make an announcement.
2. GoDaddy – This is a trusted brand that is going to get you what you want. With everything unlimited, there are many things that are going to go well with your website. You are going to be able to have the service department making sure that you’re happy with their service.
1. Zyma – Here you are going to get not only low prices, but you are also getting the quality of the group. With this, you are going to get the support that you are going to need and be able to have everything.
In the end, you are going to want to do your research. With the right hosting, you have the chance to make sure that you’re going to get the views that you want. Understanding the right needs of the customer is also a major point in the master plan. Although this could be a hard decision, you are going to have to make sure you have the right mind frame, to begin with.
If you are going to have any chance of making your website a good one, you have to make sure you are going to get you the most money out of it. However, some fear that the competition of web hosting companies is not a good thing. If you are going to get a cheaper monthly charge if you know that there is a disturbance in the tech universe, you are going to be able to want to jump at the chance.
Top 3 Webhosting Sites for Ecommerce
E-commerce is the way of the future. With many people buying things online, it is easy to see that it is going to replace traditional buying from shops. With an e-commerce site, you need to have the right web hosting. There are many different things that an e-commerce site can do and you are going to find that having the right web hosting is going to increase your odds of getting a large profit.
3. Lunarpages – With this easy to trust company, you are going to pay a low price! With a guarantee that you are going to get great service, the company will help get your website to the place it should be and allow for your profits to increase. As every hosting should have, this has it and more. You are going to get what you have paid for with this one.
2. Godaddy – Here you are going to get the comfort of having everything at your fingertips. With a great price, you are going to be allowed to have the service you deserve with paying a reasonable price. Unlike other companies, GoDaddy understands what their clients need and make sure that they are getting everything they want. Everyone knows who this company is and with the constant praises, it is always a good company to gamble with.
1. HostGator – With Unlimited service given to you as a consumer, this is the best choice if you are looking for a company that is going to make sure you are treated in the same way as everyone else and also appreciates your business. You pay a monthly fee and you will be able to get the right sales for your e-commerce site with a reliable hosting company that is not going to cost you money. This is the best for your money.
Mostly, you are going to find out that there are many hosting companies that are going to allow you to have unlimited bandwidth and other things. With the right choice of hosting, you are going to be able to benefit from a stable connection. Hosting companies sometimes have issues and they require you to be a little patient. E-commerce takes time to sell, but when you have a constant connection to your site thanks to a reliable hosting company, you are going to increase in your profits.
Hosting today is designed to help the e-commerce builder more than ever. With the advances in the module that is e-commerce, you’re going to be able to have a lot of opportunities to sustain the profit. There are several hosting companies that are going to try to sell you a bunch of false information. There are many benefits to choosing the right hosting company. You have to make sure that you have all that you need and want. With the above hosting companies, you are going to know that you are being cared for rather than being just another dollar amount.
Best Web Hosting
BlueHost is topping the list of top 10 web hosting based on our editors’ in-depth review and real customers’ votes. BlueHost was founded by Matt Heaton in 1996, and acquired by the Endurance International Group in April, 2011 for up to 1.86 billions of USD. With an affordable price, responsive customer service, the state-of-the-art technologies, and outstanding hosting performance, BlueHost has been offering quality all-in-one web hosting service for more than 15 years with a tremendous number of customer bases. In April, 2013, it even launched the latest advanced dedicated hosting, offering upgradability to their shared web hosting plan.
Cost-effective All-In-One Web Hosting
It is worth mentioning that BlueHost Professional Web Hosting is the most cost-effective one after we had reviewed hundreds of web hosting plans. It’s pricing low to $3.95/mo for the readers going through this promotion link, 44% off the regular price of $6.95/mo.
However, this budget-friendly rate doesn’t cut off the features or performance. In addition to unlimited disk storage, bandwidth, and e-mail addresses offered by most web hosts, BlueHost also provides customers with the most user-friendly cPanel control panel, self-built SimpleScripts 1-click installer, free domain name registration, free $150 adverting credits, and anytime money back guarantee.
Excellent Hosting Performance
We have monitored the performance of a WordPress site hosted with BlueHost since May 2012. According to the result, BlueHost performs an almost 100% uptime in the real world and fast server response speed averages at 258ms.
Terrific Customers’ Voice
So far, we have received 363 BlueHost reviews from real customers From a various website, 99.7% of the customers are satisfied with the BlueHost overall hosting service, including the web hosting features, uptime & page loading speed, control panel, and customer support. Read the statistics chart as follows.