Web Hosting: An Overview
Web hosting is the technology that helps website creators to make their websites accessible to users worldwide over the internet. Websites are usually a combination of text, images, videos and other related content. Web hosting allows website creators to store such content on a data center, popularly termed as web server and make it available to the users worldwide via theWorld Wide Web. Web serversare data centers provided by internet web hosting companies. These companies sell space on their personally owned or leased servers to clients. It is sold as a service to customers wanting to host their websites on the internet. Web hosts are people or organizations that rent out server space for hosting websites. There are broadly two kinds of web hosts based on their size, scale of operations and ownership of data centers.
The primary business of web hosting companies is to sell server space. However, in addition to selling server space, web hosting companies also sell various other allied services such as domain name registration, email hosting services, internet connectivity, database support, content management platforms, SSL certificates and application development.
Keep reading!This guide will help you gain an in-depth insight and understanding of the thriving web hosting business:
Professional vs. Self-Web Hosting
Most businesses opt for professional web hosting service over self-hosting owing to multiple factors. Self-Hosting suffers from a few dis-advantages which can be negative for a business in the long run. As such, most businesses prefer professional web hosting to self-hosting.
Self-hosting
- Availability and scalability can be an intricate issue including expensive proposition
- Dense peak visitor traffic periods & unwarranted swings in traffic patterns can cause downtime
- Power sabotage due to lack of redundancy and power paths ceasing business-productivity
- Involves hectic and time-consuming server management
- Provides dynamic IP address that changes over the time
Professional-hosting
- Reliable, scalable, and performance-drivendata center architecture to meet needs of most demanding web applications
- Professional web hosts owns infrastructure that suits IT costs with customer traffic patterns in real time
- Static IP address for your business-critical website that do not change over the time
- Erudite professionals to manage and maintain web server
- Multiple telecommunication networks that ensures fastest Internet connectivity and page loading time.
Basic to Advanced Web Hosting Alternatives
Web hosting services are typically categorized into three major sections depending on the following parameters:
Potential to handle traffic spikes
Scalability to match business demands
Computing Resources
Reliability
Speed
Pricing