Last Updated on January 1, 2025 by Richard Martin Linga
Today, the internet is one of the most important resources available to us. We use it to browse websites for various purposes, such as online shopping, studying/learning, and entertainment.
But even the internet has a physical side to it. Everything that you see online is stored on physical servers. Servers have limited space, so anyone who wants to create a website and make it publicly available needs to rent some server space. This process is called web hosting.
Nowadays, many people have a personal website for their small business. Many others have websites that act as portfolios. So, there is a considerable audience that needs web hosting. However, there is quite a bit of confusion about web hosting as well.
So, today, we are going to tell you about five important things you need to know about web hosting.
5 Things You Should Know About Web Hosting
Given below are five important things you need to know about web hosting before you buy one.
1.There are Multiple Types of Web Hosting
There are multiple types of web hosting, and they all have different costs. They also have different perks.
The most common types of hosting are:
- Shared
- VPS
- Dedicated
- WordPress
- Cloud-based
- Reseller
Here’s a bit about each type of hosting.
In shared hosting, you are essentially sharing server space with other people. This means you are also sharing the costs. As such, it is very cheap. However, if one of the sites on the shared space starts generating a lot of traffic, other sites will slow down to compensate.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a type of shared hosting where far fewer websites are sharing the space. This allows each website to have more resources. Of course, this also costs more.
In dedicated hosting, one website gets all the server storage, meaning no sharing is involved. It is the most reliable and expensive form of hosting. It is most suitable for enterprise websites.
WordPress hosting is available if your website is made using the WordPress website builder. It is very approachable and user-friendly.
Cloud-based hosting is an expensive type of hosting that is required for easy scalability. Basically, as your website grows, the hosting service will start giving your website more server space and resources using cloud infrastructure.
Finally, we have resellers. These are just people who are selling web hosting they bought from someone else.
The point is that all of these hosting types cost differing amounts of money and resources. So, you should check which package is the most suitable for you.
2. Buy More Data Transfer Limit Than You Think You Need
Data transfer and bandwidth are two stats that are extremely important for hosting. When you buy hosting, there is a limit to how much data your site can serve to your visitors. This is known as the data transfer limit.
Once your data transfer limit is exceeded, you will have to pay extra, or your website will become inaccessible. This is why you should always buy more space than you think you need.
Bandwidth is not the same as data transfer. A server’s bandwidth refers to the amount of data it can transfer in one unit of time. To illustrate the difference, consider this example. A server can have a data storage limit of 2,000 GBs, but its bandwidth may only be 1 Gb per second.
So, you may need more of both than you think because you cannot really predict the amount of traffic your site may attract.
3. Unlimited Data Transfers are not Unlimited
Some web hosts will say that they allow unlimited data transfers. However, that is never completely true. Most of the time, there is a hard limit to the amount of data that can be transferred.
This limit can be very high, so much so that you might never exceed it, provided that your website does not transfer insane amounts of data.
To find the actual limits, you may need to take a deep dive into the hosting provider’s terms of service or legal documents where they have to declare them. This can take a bit of time, but you should do your research before subscribing to a plan. Otherwise, you may find yourself with extra fees to pay.
4. Availability of CDNs
If your website is going to be accessed worldwide, then you should know which web hosts provide CDNs. A CDN stands for content delivery network. A CDN is a group of special servers that cache website content near the edge of the network.
They are not “hosting” the data, only caching it. The benefit of CDNs is that they allow website data to load quickly by reducing latency. They do so by checking your location and diverting you to the nearest server for a faster resolution time.
Not all web hosts provide CDNs. So, you need to make sure that if you need such a service, you choose a web host that does provide CDNs.
5. SSDs, HDDs, and OS differences
Servers are essentially computers. So, they need to have an operating system to run them. Typically, a server is run on a Linux distribution. Most of the servers available today are running on Linux.
However, if your website requires ASP or ASP.NET scripting frameworks, then you will need to buy hosting that has Windows-based servers.
One more thing you need to know is that servers with HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) and SSDs (Solid State Drives) have different loading speeds. HDDs are much slower, but they are also way cheaper, so you can have a lot of storage space.
SSDs are quite pricey, but rightly so; after all, their speed is magnitudes higher than that of HDDs. So it boils down to what you want more: speed or storage.
Conclusion
This covers all the basic information you need to have when looking for web hosting. Use this information as a springboard to learn more about web hosting and which kind suits your use case the best.