What Exactly is Shared Hosting?

If you have created a website and you wish other individuals to see it, you must copy your site to a publicly reachable server.

Where to host your site?

Although you can use your own personal computer as a web server, it is a more conventional practice to let a hosting service provider host your website. The major reason for that is the greater stability and the uninterrupted availability of your web site, because web hosting service providers have high-end hardware and apportion a much larger monthly bandwidth allowance, which guarantees the faster access to your web site from all around the globe.

Shared hosting services

Select a shared hosting service, which enables you to register domains and to set up email mailbox accounts. Many web shared hosting vendors, like us at Bethnan Hosting, offer a charge-free domain name registration as a bonus if you sign up for a hosting account.

Hosting your site yourself

Hosting your site on your own personal server is doubtlessly an option, but only if you have time and the needed knowledge. There are some facets that you have to take into account, among them the hardware and software expenses. To make a genuine, professional-looking site, you will have to invest money in some powerful server hardware, since you cannot rely on a cheap PC to carry out the task. You will also need an uninterrupted breakneck-speed connection without downtimes, which generally is offered at a rather high price. If you are availing of licensed software for your website, you will need to pay a license tax as well. You may also have to cope with bugs and software vulnerabilities. You will need to keep your web server constantly running in an environment where "everything could happen". If you do not have the required technical know-how, you will have to resort to a sysadmin to cope with these things for you, which will make the price of hosting your web site on your own even steeper than that of a dedicated hosting web server provided by a hosting company.

A dedicated hosting server provided by a hosting vendor

Leasing a dedicated web hosting server from a web hosting solutions provider is an excellent choice if you wish to run a heavy resource-requiring web site or a business web page that has very stringent safety requirements. The most important advantages of utilizing a dedicated web server hosting solution are the high-speed Internet connection, the uninterruptible power supply and the very powerful hardware. Certain hosting suppliers, again like us at Bethnan Hosting, offer virtual private servers hosting and semi-dedicated server hosting solutions, which are based on extremely powerful servers that can be divided among several customers. You can also expect them to provide efficient server load balancing services and the necessary data backup servers.

Security and reliability

Hosting providers are specialized in providing hosting services and since this is what they do to make a living, you can anticipate them to offer continuous service uptime, the newest software patches and the best anti-malware software, as well as sysadmins available 24x7x365 to assist you in the event of an emergency.

Pick your hosting distributor

What you need to take into account when picking your web hosting provider is the stability of the offered services. Make sure that the hosting services provider of your choosing offers a 24x7 customer support service. Do not put yourself in a situation where you cannot solve critical predicaments right away because you have to wait till the next working day. Furthermore, if you select a shared hosting plan, which includes a 24/7 customer support service, this implies that there constantly will be sysadmins available to solve any serious issues as soon as they take place, which is a very advantageous thing.

Daily data backups

Make sure that your hosting provider offers everyday data backups with the offered web hosting services, or else you may forfeit some valuable content in the event of a hardware crash or because you have deleted something unintentionally. The availability of everyday data backups is usually mentioned in the web hosting provider's TOS.

Traffic and web storage space

When picking your web hosting accounts provider, pay particular attention to the traffic volume limitations. Make sure that you don't have to pay a fortune for unforeseen high volumes of traffic if your website becomes more regularly visited. There are plenty of web hosting corporations that offer unlimited traffic at present, so the wisest step to take is to ensure that you have made the right decision before subscribing.

Content restrictions

Give specific attention to the hosting provider's content restrictions. If you intend to publish images or to stream video or audio content, make sure that you can achieve that. Furthermore, the majority of web hosting service providers put limitations as far as using their services for storage purposes is concerned, so if you upload too much content that is not connected or directly linked to your web site, your website hosting account could get cancelled. Hence, reading the web hosting vendor's Terms & Conditions, irrespective of how time-absorbing and wearisome this might be, is extremely vital.

Electronic mail capabilities

Most web hosting companies nowadays also provide email services with all their hosting offers. It is not a bad idea to check if the web hosting solutions provider of your choosing offers such options as well, so as to be certain that you'll obtain all the features that you require in return for your money.