What is Webhosting? (A Beginner’s Guide)

A lot of people often used to talk about this terminology and I would always contemplate until I decided to have a website of my own and learn the basics.

You will hardly hear website/blog owners talk about Webhosting unless you ask them the whole process of setting up their website. So with that, consider yourself lucky because in this article I will help you understand the whole concept of Webhosting, the different types of Webhosting that exist, and the various factors you need to consider when selecting a Webhosting provider.

So let’s understand: What’s Webhosting?

Web hosting refers to an online service that provides a secure place to store online content.

In simple terms, to have your website accessible through the World Wide Web, you have to host your website with a web hosting provider. The Webhosting provider has powerful hardware called a web server which stores all the contents of your website (For example, the articles you publish on your site, the videos, the images, audio and HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, PHP, and python codes) and allows easy maintenance and access by online users.

When a hosting provider allocates storage space on a web server for a website to store its data, the process is known as Webhosting.

Without Webhosting, you will never be able to choose a domain name. It serves the same function as a computer hard disk drive (HDD). It stores all the contents of your blog/website.

However, when choosing a reliable web hosting provider, you need to consider some factors such as;

How reliable their servers are? Their uptime Scores and security
Customer Service and Technical support. Whether the hosting provider will provide quick support on resolving a technical issue or problem on your website/blog in the fastest and most effective way. Also whether the hosting provider can provide you with the best experience you deserve as a customer?
Registration and maintenance costs. How much the webhosting will cost you monthly or annually? Choose a webhosting plan that is flexible and you can afford to pay without stretching your budget.
Ability to Add Domains. Whether they will give you the option to add more than one domain name or not?
Account Limitations. Whether your account has some limitations that you need to know.
E-commerce and Email Options. Whether you will be able to setup customized emails and enable ecommerce functionalities or not?
Availability of Site Backups. Will the hosting provider be able to automatically back up your entire website or blog?
How fast is it? You can lose traffic to your website/blog if it is slow.

There are different types of Webhosting which include:

Shared webhosting service

This is where your website/blog is hosted on the same server with hundreds of other websites/blogs. Typically all domains share resources such as RAM and the CPU.

This type of hosting has limited features and is not generally flexible in terms of software upgrades and updates. It’s often sold by resellers and web companies that have reseller accounts to provide hosting for clients.

Reseller web hosting

This is where an individual/company (reseller) buys hosting from one company (hosting provider) and sells the hosting to other people. In simple terms, the clients become web hosts themselves.

A reseller can provide any type of hosting depending on the hosting provider they are affiliated with. It’s often done by those that want to get into Webhosting or web developers who want to offer web hosting as part of their gig.

Virtual Dedicated hosting service

Here, the server resources are divided into virtual servers and they are allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware.

One entire server is dedicated to hosting only your website/blog. It’s sometimes called a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

VPS is often allocated resources based on one server to many VPSs relationships.

Managed hosting service

With this, the user is given their own web server but they are not given full control over it (for example, In the case of windows and Linux, the user is denied root access for Linux or administrator access for windows)

The user is allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools.

Colocation webhosting service

Colocation is much more like renting server space in a data center. The data center provides you with storage space, internet connectivity, cooling, electricity, and security for your equipment or hardware.

Think of it as a highly secured data center facility where servers, equipment, storage space, and bandwidth are available for sale to businesses.

A lot of people ignore colocation hosting because it’s very expensive and requires more maintenance compared to other hosting types.

Colocation hosting and dedicated hosting are almost similar because they both provide multiple ways to upgrade a website/blog and its resources.

Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting is a type of hosting that allows a website/blog to maximize the resources of many different servers to increase its performance.

Cloud hosting is possible through virtualization.

Clustered hosting

With Clustered hosting, there are multiple servers hosting the same content for maximum utilization of resources. Clustered servers work best for dedicated hosting.

Grid hosting

Grid hosting is a service that provides grid-computing capabilities to its customers.

Grid computing refers to the application of multiple servers to a setback that requires access to numerous computing cycles.

Home Server

A home server is a computer that can host one or more websites in a home network. It can be an old personal computer with sufficient storage space on the hard drive and memory connected to a network

Other specific types of hosting provided by web hosting providers include:

File hosting service where only files are hosted and not web pages
Image hosting service
Video hosting service
Blog hosting service
Shopping cart software
Paste bin
Email hosting service

Each type of hosting mentioned above has its advantages and disadvantages. Shared hosting is the cheapest amongst them with the least capabilities whereas dedicated hosting is the most powerful and expensive among them all.

As a newbie blogger, whose blog probably needs so many resources, shared hosting will be enough for you.

There are many Webhosting companies all over the world but some of the most popular ones include:

A2Hosting
Godaddy
Bluehost
Hostgator
Namecheap

For the above-mentioned list, I personally recommend that you opt for Bluehost. It’s because Bluehost is very reliable and very affordable at the same time. Many people find it easy to use making it great for starters. Bluehost also apparently has one of the best and fastest WordPress shared hosting server hosting in the Webhosting industry.

You can however still choose any other Webhosting service as long as it’s fast and very reliable. Keep in mind also that a good hosting provider offers you unlimited storage, bandwidth, and most importantly 24/7 support.

You will be charged about $70 for the first year and you will get a free domain on top of it, meaning it won’t be necessary to purchase a domain separately. You will get one from Bluehost for free

Some people are into the habit of buying and keeping their domain names and hosting on separate service providers however I recommend that you keep yours under one account with the same service provider for easy management and maintenance.

Bluehost prices constantly change so endeavor to check their current pricing here.