What is Hosting?
Hosting is a service that hosting providers offer so that you can upload your site to the web.
How can people discover your website?
When you build a website and you wish other people to view it, you will have to copy (or upload) it to a server. If you attempt to render the website discoverable online by hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why website hosting services came into being.
How does hosting work?
Hosting companies provide you with space for your website on their high-end computers (hosting servers) and ensure constant network uptime. When somebody writes your URL (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web server where they can have a look at the content of your web site.
Types of hosting
With the development of web technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to fulfill the different needs of website possessors, including shared website hosting services, VPS web server hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.
Shared web hosting
Shared web hosting is the most commonly used form of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where one web server is divided among a lot of users who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and web space quotas that they have been allocated. This type of website hosting is generally cheaper - you don't have to pay for the whole hosting server upfront, since it is divided among many web hosting account holders, and the web hosting company can afford to offer much lower prices. It is also easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the web hosting provider handles all server maintenance tasks and security updates for you.
The downside of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's system resources with other web hosting customers and if one web site becomes very busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the websites on that hosting server, but the majority of web hosting service providers, including us at Hosting Wordpress, have security platforms at work that prevent that from taking place.
A description of a website hosting service
Because shared website hosting is the most widely used form of web hosting, most hosting firms and hosting customers simply refer to it as hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive competition on the hosting marketplace, most hosting vendors endeavor to offer affordable prices and bonuses with their web hosting services. We, for example, offer different web hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and annual, depending on your budget. If you choose the annual billing cycle, you will obtain a gift - one free-of-charge domain registration.
VPS
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated web server hosting solution. If your website outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting plan, a virtual web hosting server plan is a good option. VPS web server hosting clients still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other virtual server web hosting account owners, but the hard disk space is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a real dedicated web hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a VPS hosting server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization software gives you much more freedom to configure your virtual server, but it also calls for a higher degree of technical expertise.
Dedicated Server
With the Dedicated Server solution, the client gets a whole dedicated hosting web server and can use all its resources. The dedicated server hosting solution is the most powerful of all web hosting solutions and offers multiple configuration options - the dedicated web server hosting users can select the hardware and software specifications that will fulfill their demands. Dedicated system resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated web server is an excellent solution for a frequently visited business website, for example - you will not share the physical server's system resources with anyone else and will get full root privileges. You will exert full control over the server, which will allow you to make any server configuration changes that you might require. The weak side of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical know-how is required - unless you hire an Information Technology expert, it will be your duty to administer and configure the dedicated web server. The dedicated server web hosting solution is also much more costly, since the cost of the server isn't shared between any other customers.
A website hosting tip for beginners
If you are just starting to create your website and are looking for a website hosting solution to commence with, the shared hosting solution persists to be the smartest option. If your website grows beyond your shared website hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and requires no migration of your web site files, since only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your hosting plan to a more powerful one at any given moment without worrying about the number of days remaining until the expiration date. Moreover, if you finally reach the most powerful shared hosting plan and still require more system resources (which is great sometimes - it signifies that your web site's popularity has increased!), there always is the option to move to a VPS web hosting platform or a dedicated web hosting platform without the need to change web hosting providers.
| Regular | Deluxe | Ultimate | Economy |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $3.92 / month | $8.67 / month | $12.50 / month | $3.00 / month |