If you are considering, say, launching a website, there are several web hosting basics that you should be familiar with before starting the project. Although it is relatively easy to sign up and use vendor-provided website building software to quickly create an attractive and functional interface, there are many related terms and concepts to understand. As you will soon see, some of this is confusing, if not totally contradictory. Here's what you need to know about web hosting before opening an account.
- There is a big difference between the types of hosting
If you've spent any time on a web host's website, you've probably seen terms like shared, VPS, dedicated, cloud, WordPress, and reseller. They represent the different types of web hosting, but not all best web hosting providers offer them all. In addition, the types of accommodation differ from each other significantly.
Almost all web servers offer shared hosting, the cheapest form of web hosting. With shared hosting, your website shares a server and server resources with many other sites. If you want to keep your web hosting budget small and don't expect a lot of traffic, shared hosting is the way to go. You should expect to pay less than $ 10 per month for this type of web host. However, this level of hosting is best suited for small sites that don't need a lot of bandwidth. Since you are sharing resources with other sites, you should be prepared for the occasional slowdown in case one of your site mates starts to attract a lot of visitors.
Larger companies expecting high traffic to their sites should choose VPS or dedicated hosting, each of which offers increasingly powerful server specifications. VPS hosting is like a high-powered version of shared hosting, except that far fewer websites share the resources of a server, which are also a bit more segregated. VPS hosting costs more than shared hosting, but you have to pay less than $ 100 per month.
Dedicated hosting puts your site on a server on its own, so you can harness the full power of a server. This is the most expensive type of accommodation; you may end up paying $ 100 per month or more for this gross energy.
Reseller hosting allows you to start your own branded or best web hosting 2021 business without worrying about building the infrastructure from scratch. WordPress hosting allows you to create a site in an environment that conforms to the world's most popular content management system. What about cloud hosting? That's a completely different beast that allows you to easily scale website power across multiple servers, although not all web servers offer it. Still. Prices for these levels of accommodation are all over the place, so it's vital to shop around.
- Bandwidth is not the same as data transfer
Often times, "bandwidth" and "data transfer" are used interchangeably to define the amount of data that your website offers to visitors, but the terms technically do not have the same definitions.
Bandwidth represents the total amount of data that can be transferred at one time, while data transfer is throughput or the actual amount of information that can be used over a given period of time, usually a month. Think of it this way: a web server can have a maximum bandwidth of 5GB, but depending on your hosting plan, your site may allow only 1GB of data transfers per month.
Note: If your website exceeds allotted monthly data transfers due to a Reddit success, for example, a cheap web hosting may slow your site's data transfer speeds or charge you a fee read more here as a penalty. It may even ask you to upgrade to a higher level of web hosting. It's good to know your site's data limitations before encountering situations like this.
- Unlimited is not absolutely unlimited
Web servers will entice you to sign up for their web hosting plans by tempting you with the promise of unlimited storage or monthly data transfers. Usually this is not a completely honest deal. Now, I won't say that these web servers lie directly, but "unlimited" storage or data transfers almost always have limitations that vary by company. FatCow, for example, offers "heaps" of disk space and claims that there is no limit to a user's content, as long as that person fully complies with the company's terms of service and uses the storage "for normal operation of their website FatCow... "It's like the bottomless shrimp buffet: eventually a restaurant will run you out of shrimp if they don't run out of shrimp first.
Unlimited storage and data transfers are usually associated with shared or WordPress plans, and allow you to run wild ... within limits. If your blog receives a consistent stream of reasonable traffic (whatever that means!), You'll be in good shape. However, you shouldn't expect to upload or stream 50 TB of data per day. The average joe isn't doing that, probably dabbling in some questionable pursuits.
You should consult the terms of service of a web host, or customer service representative, to find out exactly what you can and cannot do within the scope of your plan's unlimited offer. For example, DreamHost states on its website that the company does not track "bandwidth or traffic, so you never have to worry about overage fees."
- The trade-off between the solid state drive and the hard disk drive
If you're looking to sign up for shared & affordable web hosting, chances are you're getting real estate on the traditional hard disk drive (HDD) server. The advantage of an HDD-based server is that it can offer large amounts of storage at a low price. As you move up the hosting ladder to more powerful offerings like VPS and dedicated web servers, you will have the option of creating a site on a solid state drive (SSD).
SSD-based servers are ultra-fast storage drives. SSD technology is still quite expensive, so your SSD-based servers will be one of the fastest web hosting tend to have much smaller storage totals than HDDs. You will rarely see 1TB SSD servers, which is a common number in the hard drive field.
- A Linux server will work ... Most of the time
Almost all web servers offer Linux as the operating system that powers their servers. In fact, I don't think I ever reviewed a web server that lacked the free open source operating system. Even if you are unfamiliar with Linux, you don't need to do any special back-end work to create a website. Website builders make site building a breeze.
That said, if your site requires the ASP or ASP.NET scripting frameworks, you will need to run it with the Windows Server operating system. This is because the script you write and the web pages it produces will only work in a Windows-based environment.
There is an added benefit: Microsoft applications, such as Office or Outlook, integrate with the server with ease. Low? Windows servers are incompatible with Linux-based open source software unless you do some tinkering.
Windows servers cost roughly $ 10 to $ 20 more than their Linux equivalents, but if you need Microsoft's tools, it's a small premium.