Cindy Cox asked:




There are many advantages to dedicated hosting compared to other types of hosting, but one of the best benefits to this hosting set-up is that it provides your web business with serious attention. Other types of hosting include shared hosting, reseller hosting, and blog hosting. Unlike in the shared type of hosting wherein several websites take up space in a single server, a dedicated hosting service allocates a single server to a specific website or website owner. Of course, since you will be solely taking up the server space, you have to be prepared to pay for more. Nonetheless, many online entrepreneurs realize that the higher expenses often translate to better ROI in the long run.

While shared hosting is deemed to be more cost-effective by many online entrepreneurs, there are certain problems not uncommon with this type of arrangement. Many websites are sharing bandwidth and disk space within a single server in a shared hosting type. If your site is not experiencing high web traffic yet, sharing bandwidth with other websites may not seem like such a bad idea. However, as your site and online business begins to grow, you will require upgraded tools as well as bigger disk space. For many online businesses enjoying substantial growth, dedicated hosting is a far better choice.

Many website owners also appreciate the fact that they are able to retain much of the control when they settle for dedicated hosting. If you are a web business owner and you plan to build an-e-commerce site on the web, you may choose the option to manage your server or to leave the management aspect to your hosting provider. The latter option is ideal for those who don’t want to be bothered with technical expertise and maintenance processes. Either way, you will still be able to enjoy the kind of control, which is often unheard of in shared hosting or reseller hosting.

There are many excellent hosting providers of dedicated servers found on the web. These hosting companies typically offer a range of packages at specific price ranges. A thorough evaluation on the needs of your website is important before you pick a hosting provider. Once you recognize the actual requirements of your website, you will have a clearer idea on which types of services to settle for. Choosing a reliable hosting provider is important, especially since you would want to get the best out of your monthly payments. Most dedicated hosting packages can easily cost you $100 per month, so you have to make sure the services are worth every penny.

If you want your website to have sophisticated features and to be taken seriously by your clients, you will do best with a dedicated type of hosting service. Since you can control much of what happens in your site and your server, you will be able to anticipate downtimes earlier and to use preventive measures in a prompt manner. Dedicated hosting essentially means serious business, and this is what many online visitors and discriminating clients prefer.

Ewan MacLeod asked:




Choosing the right Web Hosting package for you can be a bewildering task. With so many packages, prices, terms, conditions, companies and countries vying for your business, it’s important that you understand what you need, so you can choose a company who can give you what you want.

So here’s a list of the major types of Web Hosting available on the market – what they are, and what they’re suitable for. And to make it a bit easier, we’ll follow the career of Dave*, a budding web entrepreneur making his first forays into the world of Web Hosting.

Free Hosting

Free Hosting is exactly that, and although the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ doesn’t exactly apply – as you are getting something, after all – Free Hosting is not recommended for anyone with any kind of serious aspirations for their site. Of course we offer Web Hosting so we would say that, right? Well, the two main things to consider when looking at Free Hosting are 1 – someone has to pay for it, and 2 – what happens if something goes wrong.

With regards to the first point, it’s often the case that your Web Hosting is paid for by advertisements on your site, and as that is what makes the Web Host their money, they could well be as interested in advertising on your site as they are in getting you to use their service so they can have more adverts. This leads on to point two – what kind of support do you think you will get from a company that is giving you something for free? What kind of guarantees can you have that your Web Hosting is reliable or secure?

It is also common for Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), amongst others, to offer Free Hosting as part of a package with other services (such as Broadband or Digital TV). These are better solutions as they obviously come attached to a reputable (well…) company, and will be able to provide support. Again, though, remember that it is their other service that pay for your Hosting – the Hosting is an enticing extra. Support may well suffer, too, if the company specialises in other products and services.

Some companies, for instance Blogger, will offer free online spaces for specific sites (in Blogger’s case, you get a free online blog). However, you’re limited to what you can do with the templates they give you, and you won’t be able to expand your site or even have your own domain name. So, only go for Free Hosting if you are completely satisfied that the company will be able to provide you with what you want. We wouldn’t advise choosing Free Hosting for a business-related site in any circumstance!

In Dave’s instance, he has been given some Free Hosting as part of a deal with his ISP. Dave’s never made a website of his own before, and he’s certainly never had any Web Hosting. He’s interested but a bit lost, and manages to build a basic, personal site with only a few difficulties. He stumbles across WordPress and finds that he doesn’t get any databases with his Free Hosting. As the Hosting is part of his package – and free – his ISP don’t have any facility to upgrade his account. Dave decides he wants his blog on the Internet, and after talking to one of his friends on Blogger and thinking dreamily about maybe starting an online business, Dave contacts some Web Hosting companies to see what is available to him.

Shared Hosting

This is the most common form of Web Hosting available. A company sets up one or more servers to be used for Web Hosting, and their customers in turn pay for a portion of that server and share it with other customers. So a server may be responsible for several hundred web sites at a time.

Shared Hosting has many advantages. It is the cheapest form of commercial Hosting, as the cost of the server can be offset by the many customers who can use it at once. They don’t require advanced technical knowledge to use and you only need to administer your account – at no point do you have anything to do with the server. As it is a paid solution you will have access to customer support, a contract, uptime guarantees and so on.

The disadvantage is that, as you are sharing a server with other customers, you are also sharing the resources of that server. The server, just like a home PC, has only so much memory, CPU and disk space available, and if other customers are using it heavily – or if the Web Host has put too many people on the server – or even if the server isn’t particularly fast in the first place! – you may well find that your web site appears to be slow.

You will also find that Shared Hosting doesn’t allow a lot of the advanced, powerful features that higher end options present to you. There is a slight increase in security risk, too, as you can never be sure how secure your ‘neighbours’ are – but bear in mind that the server will be very secure in the first place, and the risk is not something to be alarmed about.

So our friend Dave starts out with a very simple Web Hosting package, with a little web space and a database. He installs WordPress and starts to blog seriously, and then decides he wants to start his online business. With his basic account he commissions a Web Design Company to build him an eCommerce site, with his blog built in as one of the features. As his store grows, he finds that he can expand his site fairly easily, without having to worry about any limits like he had with the ISP.

Shared Hosting is the ideal solution for most sites and users. With a few exceptions, only people who want their own server and/or control over the contents of it will need anything else. So Dave, like many people, is perfectly happy, until he decides to quit his day job, and go full time with his eCommerce site. At this point, Dave, who is a bit more knowledgeable about Web Hosting now, considers if there is anything he can do to improve his site.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller Hosting is a generic term that applies to several different kinds of Web Hosting. It isn’t a definition of the kind of Web Hosting on offer, as such, as the kind of person offering it.

A Hosting Reseller purchases a larger Web Hosting account from a Web Hosting company, and in turn sells portions of their account to their own customers. They are essentially providing the services of a Web Hosting company, without having to set up and finance the expensive hardware and the maintenance of it themselves. This kind of Web Hosting is popular with, for example, start-up Web Hosting businesses, companies with a large portfolio of sites, and Web Design companies wanting to offer Hosting to their clients.

A Hosting Reseller may be offering Shared, VPS or Dedicated solutions (see part two). Customers tend to benefit from cheaper Web Hosting as a Reseller often purchases their Web Hosting at a discount. The only major drawback with Reseller Hosting is that the Reseller is also a customer of the company they have bought their Hosting off of in the first place. The more advanced the Hosting they are offering, the more support the Reseller can give you directly – but as a customer of a Reseller, it is possible that you will contact the Reseller about a technical fault, who will then in turn have to contact his or her Hosting company.

Reseller Hosting is only of use to Dave if he decides to sell Hosting to other people, or expand his business with a large portfolio of other sites. If he wasn’t looking to do either of these he’d probably stick with Shared Hosting – as it is the most common form of Hosting it is also the most popular, and he’d get more use out of it. For now though, Dave thinks he is happy with a single site, he would just prefer to have more control and performance as his site is getting quite busy and he has a few demanding redesign plans in mind. So, in the second part of this article, we’ll look at some of the more advanced Web Hosting options available to Dave (and you, of course).

*Dave is not real. He is just for illustrative purposes only, and any resemblance to any Dave or any events that have happened to any Dave, living, dead or otherwise, is purely coincidental.

Dhruv Patel asked:




Web hosting is a vital part of your online business. Whether your business is small or big, if you have business web site, you need to have good web site hosting with high up time & reliability. If your web site hosting performance is poor and if it has poor response time, more than half of your visitors will close your web site.

Selecting good hosting provider is an important work. There are many factors involved to consider while choosing web site hosting service provider.?Based on my experience, I am going to explain you some of the important factors.

Web Hosting Location

Web site hosting location plays vital role for your web site response time. You should select a location where majority of your customers stays.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you are having a company in India and you sell your product in USA. Majority of your customers are from USA. There is simply no point of hosting your web site in India. Don’t host your site in India because it’s cheap. Since you have all customers from USA, hosting your site in USA will give you super fast response time.

So you got the point. Always select the hosting location where majority of your customers are.

Flexible Control

Your web hosting provider should give you full control to install whatever you want in your hosting environment. Some of the hosting providers don’t give control to install application in their shared hosting service.

For example, you might need ioncube loader (php module) to run your application or say you want to change some of the php configuration setting to get better performance for your site. You should be able to do all this in your hosting environment. Web hosting provider should give you control over all settings.

Uptime

There should be an at least 99% up time. This is something that you cannot decide before joining. Some hosting providers do provide SLA for up time. Some don’t provide SLA that doesn’t mean they are not giving high up time. You simply need to find out the up time. Search on Google, read some review and find out the performance history of the company. If there are too many bad reviews, don’t go for that hosting company.

SSH Access

SSH makes much of the work simpler. In dedicated web hosting, you will definitely get SSH access but what if you don’t have budget for dedicated web hosting and you still want SSH access. There are some hosting providers in the market which gives you SSH access in shared hosting environment too. SSH makes your life easier. If you are an advanced player, you should always select the hosting with SSH access.

Disk Space & Bandwidth

Now a day, hardware has become so cheap that many hosting providers give unlimited disk space and unlimited data transfer limit. You will always get much more disk space then your need but still this is an important factor. Always make sure that you will have enough disk space and band width to serve your future web traffic.

I hope this article will help you to make your decision regarding web hosting service provider.?

Miguel Mateos Romo asked:




The world of web hosting can be difficult to grasp. There are so many things to consider when choosing a server that you may feel overwhelmed or lost. There are many, many options out there on the market today, making your decision that much harder to make. Choosing the right server is one of the important decisions you need to make when you wish to create a website. One of the most important aspects of a web host or server is its hosting uptime.

Hosting uptime, to state it briefly, is the amount of time that a server is online and running. This is important to you because if you have a website, you want to ensure that your website is available to the public at all times; however, there is no such thing as 100% guaranteed uptime running. If a company or serve claims that there hosting uptime percentage is 100, you need to look the other way. There is no such thing as 100% uptime. To understand that concept, you need to understand the three types of downtime.

The first type of downtime is called planned downtime. This downtime is, in fact, planned. Web hosts and servers use planned downtime to upgrade, reboot and so on. This type of downtime, while it may seem like a negative aspect, is actually good for you and the server or web host in the future. Web hosts and servers will generally let you know when this is occurring so you can expect your site to be down for a certain amount of time. This downtime is to be expected.

Somewhat planned downtime refers to servers fixing a bug in the system or errors and taking care of problems. Most of the time servers or web hosts will let you know about the issue and how long the server is to be expected to be offline. This kind of downtime is to be expected as well.

The last type of downtime is negative. It is referred to as unplanned downtime. Servers with a lot of unplanned downtime are servers and webhosts that you want to avoid. A server with a lot of unexpected downtime can be a disaster for you and seriously harm your business. Usually individuals who go to a site that is not currently running automatically assume the business no longer exists and that potential customer will be forever lost.

You will want to do plenty of research to ensure that the servers or web hosts you are considering have positive hosting uptime percentages. While some downtime is expected, a server with too much downtime is a red flag. Web hosts and servers should have a hosting uptime percentage of 99.9. This number is important. Remember that there is no such thing as 100 percent hosting uptime. A server is lying to you if they claim this percentage.

Ultimately, if you want to ensure the success of your site, you need to start by finding a reliable server with good hosting uptime.

Kalyan Kumar asked:




Web hosting or plain hosting refers to utilizing a server to host a website. This hosting service enables a site to go live on the internet and let the people who are online see all the text and images provided on that particular website.

It used to be just plain hosting of a site. Today, however, there exists what is known as cloud hosting. The term may sound new to you but you may actually be using it without your knowledge.

Google is a pioneered in cloud hosting. The cloud actually refers to an extensive computer infrastructure that Google utilizes especially in most of its operations including the search engines.

By cloud hosting, it means a website is being hosted on a clustered or group of servers. Through this method, more than one server supports a site’s online operations giving it more power with little chances of a crash or other server-related problems. In other words, a website takes advantage of a number of servers in managing its security features, load balance and hardware resources and in real time at that.

With this type of hosting, a website can expand easily unlike when using a single server or shared server which has certain limitations. Lesser problems can be experienced by website owners and publishers owing to the scalability of this option.

Less cost is also involved which can really be a major advantage. The reason for its cost effectiveness is that cloud hosting companies charge users only for every use. Only the quantity of the computing power is what’s considered similar to what power and water companies do. There’s no longer any need to reserve power for server because cloud hosting providers can easily meet the requirements of websites on time.

In terms of security, companies still have to make sure they have an effective strategy for protecting their valuable data. This is one area where they should invest in training their people. An important step to take as well is to reach an agreement with the cloud hosting service to encourage them to be transparent in their operations and to assure clients of immediate action should troubles occur that can affect online operations.

Cloud computing and hosting have become an integral part of the IT industry in the recent years. In fact, this has led to the entry of more companies providing such service. Among the major groups in this field today are the GoGrid, Amazon, RakeSpace, Mosso, FlexiScale, GridLayer and NetDepot.

Reports have it that startup companies are opting for cloud hosting nowadays rather than build their own IT infrastructure or data centers which can be very expensive. Apart from the appliances, getting manpower to oversee them adds to the expense. Whereas by going for the cloud, organizations can just leave their server needs to these services on the internet and pay only for the computing power that they use.

For those conscious about their budget but aim to create powerful websites, this route is indeed highly recommended.