Definition of Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting is a service that hosting suppliers provide so that you can upload your website to the Internet.

How can people observe your site?

When you build a site and you would like other individuals to access it, you will need to publish (or upload) it to a web hosting server. If you attempt to make the site visible on the World Wide Web by shared web hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it online all the time, which is why web hosting services appeared.

How does shared web hosting work?

Web hosting providers provide you with disk drive storage space for your web site on their high-power computers (web servers) and ensure constant Internet connection. When someone types your domain (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can take a look at the content of your web site.

Types of web hosting

With the advancement of web technologies, different types of web hosting services have come into being to answer the different needs of website owners, including shared website hosting services, private virtual server web hosting services and dedicated server web hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared website hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where a single web server is shared between numerous hosting account holders who are limited by the CPU, traffic and web space quotas that they have been allotted. This type of hosting is typically cheaper - you don't have to pay for the entire web hosting server in advance, since it is shared among many clients, and the web hosting services provider can afford to offer much lower prices. It is also easier to use - the web server is pre-installed with all the necessary software and the web hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates on your behalf.

The drawback of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's resources with other persons and if a given website becomes very busy it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the websites on that hosting server, but the majority of hosting vendors, including us at Cloud Hosting, have protection platforms at work that obstruct that from happening.

A definition of a hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most widely used type of web hosting, most web hosting suppliers and web hosting clients simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive competition on the hosting market, the majority of web hosting suppliers endeavor to offer reasonable prices and gifts with their services. We, for instance, offer different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your funds. If you choose the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a present - one free-of-cost domain registration.

VPS web hosting

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your web site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting plan, a virtual server package is an appropriate option. VPS server hosting account owners still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS web server hosting account holders, but the disk drive is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured practically like a full-fledged dedicated server. The advantage is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a virtual server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your VPS hosting server, but it also calls for a more advanced level of technical know-how.

Dedicated Server Web Hosting

With the Dedicated Server Web Hosting solution, the user gets a whole dedicated web server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated web server hosting solution is the most powerful of all website hosting solutions and offers countless configuration possibilities - the dedicated web hosting users can pick the hardware and software specifications that will match their needs. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are among the reasons why a dedicated hosting server is a perfect option for a busy business web portal, for instance - you will not share the web hosting server's resources with anyone else and will be given full server root privileges. You will have complete control over the physical server, which will allow you to implement any configuration changes that you might require. The weakness of the dedicated server web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical competence is needed - unless you hire an IT professional, you will be responsible for administering and configuring the physical machine. The dedicated server hosting solution is also much more costly, because the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared among any other users.

A website hosting recommendation for novices

If you are just beginning to create your web site and are looking for a web hosting solution to start with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most sensible choice. If your site outgrows your hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for example, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your files, since only the parameters of your hosting account change. You can also upgrade your hosting plan to a more powerful one at any given moment without having to worry about the number of days remaining before expiration. Moreover, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared web hosting package and still require more resources (which is great sometimes - it means that your website's popularity has expanded!), there always is the possibility to move to a VPS server hosting solution or a dedicated web hosting platform without the need to swap hosting service providers.