Setting up a website will necessarily force you to think about its hosting. For many of us, this is the time to ask ourselves: what exactly is it, and what are the main choices available to me? To answer these questions specifically, read on.
A summary of web hosting
Briefly, web hosting consists of making a website permanently accessible to Internet users via access to a server. As the server (s) owner, the company you are dealing with becomes the host of your website.
The data that codifies a website (including the HTML and CSS code) are grouped in several files to then be deposited on a server, administered by the host. Your browser will then translate the data contained on the server to allow the website to be displayed with all these components as it appears before your eyes. Note that the web host may offer additional services such as antivirus protection for your site or a backup service.
Far from being offered under the same formula, accommodation comes in several forms, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. Either way, the servers will need to have efficient bandwidth (at least 100 Mbps, which means the download speed will be around 100 megabits per second).
The different types of web hosting and their prices
Shared hosting
Shared hosting consists of allowing many sites (which can even be counted in thousands) to share a single server’s resources. As the server is thus occupied simultaneously by many sites, the costs relating to this option are considerably reduced and are between $ 5 and $ 10 per month.
Although economically this choice has a definite advantage, it presents a very annoying problem. Indeed, suppose one of the sites is very busy. In that case, it will monopolize a larger part of the memory and thereby adversely affect the other sites’ operation, the loading speed of which will be reduced.
However, if upload speed isn’t a particularly important factor in your case, shared hosting may be a good idea. Above all sites under development, we think of sites whose configuration does not present a high degree of complexity and those with a low or medium level of traffic.
VPS hosting
VPS hosting, on the other hand, works much the same as shared hosting. The first difference between it and the latter is that the server sharing is only done with 20 websites, which is significantly less than in the previous option.
Secondly, this type of hosting avoids the inconvenience of seeing its site’s loading speed slowed down due to too much traffic on another site because all the sites hosted on the server benefit from the same. Share of memory.
When it comes to setting up a website, the possibilities are also much greater with VPS hosting, a major advantage. As for the price of VPS hosting, it varies between $ 80 and $ 450 per month.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting, for its part, consists of hosting only one site per server, which is mainly used for sites with a very high traffic rate per month (several tens of thousands of visitors) as well, only for those whose confidentiality of information is vital. Also, large companies prefer this hosting because it provides a high-level protection against potential hacker attacks. As a price, dedicated hosting will cost around $ 125 per month.
Even though dedicated hosting seems to be preferable to VPS hosting, it’s important to know that the best version of the latter can outperform dedicated hosting performance, provided, of course, that you pay the price.
Free hosting: but what is it?
As the name suggests, free hosting consists of enjoying free space on a server. Of course, whoever provides the space to host your website will still make money through this service by putting advertising space on your site. Note, however, that this solution is more suitable for hosting a page than a website.
How to define your web hosting needs
Before deciding on one type of accommodation more than another, it is important to think precisely about several elements, including:
- your monthly budget;
- the traffic of your site per day;
- when the traffic is highest;
- your technical support needs;
- your data privacy needs.
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