Selecting a Website Hosting Service
There are numerous website hosting services available and some of them are quite inexpensive. However, understanding the details of website hosting is extremely important.Free versus Paid Website Hosting – If you are simply looking for a personal web page or are an extremely small business, then a free hosting service may be your answer. They provide you with a domain name and with a limited number of pages that they will support. Additionally they also usually provide you with a free email address. However, most free hosting is also supported by advertising, so visitors to your site will be subjected to whatever advertising the hosting service places on your page, including advertisements for their own hosting services. Paid services are usually much better for serious businesses or businesses that have a great deal of pages they want supported. Usually, paid hosting services include web page development support, emails, SSL certification and even shopping basket and ecommerce services. Prices for paid web hosting services range from relatively inexpensive $1-2 per month to hundreds of dollars, depending on the bandwidth and space provided.
Domain Hosting – Domain website hosting services are relatively inexpensive and can range from a few dollars per year to literally thousands of dollars, depending on the domain name. Domain hosting is really where you purchase your domain name, but the host does not actually host the site. Some domain hosting services offer website hosting services for an additional fee and even include services like web site design services, credit card processing access and other services. It is not uncommon for businesses to change their domain hosting company from year to year to take advantage of better prices or better service with another provider.
Dedicated versus Non-dedicated Servers – Decisions about dedicated servers can be somewhat confusing to novices in website hosting and ecommerce. The easiest way to understand it is to think about condos and apartments versus single homes. A non-dedicated server is like having your website in an apartment or condo – it shares the space on a server with other websites; there is a dedicated space on the server that is utilized by your website, but the space is also shared. A dedicated server, on the other hand, is like a single home. The website resides on its own server and does not share the space with any other websites. Dedicated servers are more expensive and are an excellent choice for medium to large sized businesses that need a great deal of space and control for their website.
Summary
Creating a website involves more than just throwing up a site and hoping for the best. Careful attention to choosing a web site hosting service can make a significant difference in the success of a website and it is important to understand everything a potential website hosting service can offer. Some of the aspects to choosing a website host include deciding between free and paid hosting services, choosing a domain name and deciding between a dedicated server or a non-dedicated server.
