A host is a service provider who places your website on a server connected to the internet. It mainly rents you disk space which gives internet users a way to access your website. The server used for web hosting looks like the computer you have at home. The difference is that this computer is set up to serve websites and is therefore called “Server”. It is connected 24/7 and uses a broadband connection to be able to quickly respond to several simultaneous requests. A single server can host hundreds of websites (shared hosting). There are thousands of web hosting companies available in the market with different benefits and prices. Here are the most important criteria that you should check before choosing a web host.
Summary
Type of web server
This is the type of server software that runs on the server. Windows, Linux and Unix servers are the common types of servers.
If your website is basic, the type of server doesn’t really matter. If you have a more complex website that uses databases and contains dynamic pages, then this criterion should be taken into consideration.
Windows servers tend to be a little more expensive than Linux servers. If you need to run a Microsoft SQL Server database or use Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), then you must choose a Windows Server. If you have no idea what that means, then you don’t need Windows, you can choose any other server.
Disk space
This is the amount of space actually available to store your website on the web server’s hard drive.
Web pages (HTML) are normally very light, 40-50KB on average. This means that you can store a large number of web pages in a small amount of disk space. On the other hand, Images and videos take up much more space.
Nowadays, the majority of web hosting plans offer large disk space. Extra space is always useful.
Bandwidth per month
Each time a user visits your website, data is transferred from the webserver where your site is hosted to the visitor’s browser.
Bandwidth measures the transfer between the website and the Internet users who access it. Its width is obviously linked to the number of visitors you receive.
For most websites, you don’t need a very large bandwidth. Probably the majority of online sites use less than 2 GB of bandwidth per month. If you intend to have a large number of software, audio or video downloads, then you may end up with much higher bandwidth.
There are web hosting companies that offer unlimited bandwidth. It sounds like a good deal but it is nothing but a lie. Unlimited bandwidth is not only impossible but would cost a fortune.
When the hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, they try to attract you. They know that you are probably not going to use a lot of bandwidth and when you try to do so, your host will contact you to ask you to choose another hosting plan (Generally you will be led to rent an entire dedicated server).
Email accounts
How many email accounts (personal email) can you have with your web host?
A name for my site!!
All sites usually have a name, like ours is called www.dmtwebhosting.com. It’s a name that points to space where your site is physically located.
In reality, your site address is nothing more than a combination of numbers. This is called an IP address; it looks like this 161.120.178.34. An IP address is a unique address; it is the identifier of your site on the internet.
Domain names such as www.dmtwebhosting.com are really just a pointer to the actual address. This makes websites much easier to remember.
Normally, purchasing domain names is separate from purchasing web hosting. You can, for example, buy a domain name and hosting from DMTwebhosting.
It may be easier to let your web host do it alone. You will just tell him the domain name you have chosen (www.yoursite.com for example). If that name is available, it automatically points to your web hosting space so that when someone types in the address on their browser, it is automatically directed to your website. However, we strongly recommend that you buy your domain name elsewhere than your host in order to avoid any complications in case you wish to change your internet host.
Note: There are hundreds of extensions. Domain names are rented per year.
Different types of web hosting
There are different types of web hosting; the choice depends on your website and your budget. Here is a general description of the different types:
Shared hosting
This is the most economical solution and the most common type of web hosting. With shared hosting, you pay a monthly fee and get part of a shared server. For very low-cost offers, you can only have a small amount of disk space and bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem for the vast majority of sites), as well as your website, will be hosted with a hundred others on the same server which can pose a reliability problem.
We recommend DMTwebhosting as a shared host.
Dedicated server hosting
With dedicated server hosting, you have a fully dedicated server for your website. This gives you a lot more freedom and you can host hundreds of your own websites. Dedicated servers are normally reserved for large sites that receive thousands of visitors per day, such as e-commerce sites. A dedicated server is more reliable, but also much more expensive; count at least 120 dollars per month.
We recommend DMTwebhosting as a dedicated host.
How to choose the right offer?
You have many choices in the web hosting market and finding the offer that best suits your needs can be quite difficult.
Before you start looking for a web host, the first step is to determine your needs. It can be very tempting to choose plans that offer everything, but you will probably only use 1/10 of these resources.
Determine exactly what you need and then use our site to find the offer that most satisfies you.
About the author
DMTwebhosting.com’s Editorial Team prides itself on bringing you the latest web hosting news and the best web hosting articles!
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