Web hosting is a service that enables an organization or an individual to post own website on the internet. The service provider is intended to provide the technologies and services needed to allow visibility of the website or webpage on the internet. Web sites are hosted or all the information required by websites is stored on special computers called servers. Almost all the business houses in the market own a website of their own in these days. However, due to rapid technological advancements, developing and maintaining a web server on their own is becoming a hassle for companies. Hence, many of the major corporate houses outsource their services to a reliable third party who can provide them affordable web hosting plans. Most of the companies compel you to have your own domain in order to host a website with them. However, if you do not own a domain, these companies will help you in purchasing one for you.
There are different types of hosting plans available to launch a website. Before signing up with a service provider, it is important to understand what sort of service your website needs, the kind of server you or your business need, budget, and type of plans the company offers. Let’s look at few affordable web hosting plans by various companies,
• Website Builders – This type of service catering to the needs of beginners who need to host a website but lack technical skills to build a website on their own. They provide you an online browser-based interface through which you can launch your own website without any additional settings. This type of web hosting is the most basic kind without many technical difficulties.
• Shared Hosting – In a shared hosting environment, you and other website owners share one server. This includes sharing the physical server and the software applications within the server. Shared services are most affordable ones because the cost to operate the server is shared between you and the other owners.
• Dedicated Hosting – In this server environment, you own an entire web server to yourself. This enhances your server to work faster and efficient as all your server resources are dedicated to serving your website alone. However, this type of servers is quite costly and the cost of designing and maintenance should be solely born by one entity. Hence, these types of servers are suitable for large and well-established entities and are not for small enterprises or start-ups.
• Collocated Hosting – In this type of hosting, your dedicated server will be housed at the facility while the entire maintenance of the web server is under your control. This control on the web server allows you to install any scripts or applications you need on to the server.