If you want to run an online business smoothly and effectively, you need to get reliable hosting for your website. For a successful online business, getting good web hosting service is also important along with having an attractive logo design and web design.
Selecting the best web host requires a lot of research, since there are many options available in the market. Several factors need to be evaluated before making a final decision. It’s important to completely understand the nature of the website, expected traffic and the available budget.
There are following four types of hosting options available:
- Free Hosting
- Shared Hosting
- Collocated Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
Free Hosting
Different companies offer free hosting plan for the first year, but in the world of free hosting, the connection can be slow, websites remain down most of the times and unwanted advertisements are added to your website. If you want to work professionally then I’ll suggest you to avoid free hosting plans. Free hosting is good only if you want to create a website for fun.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting means that the bandwidth will be divided with other users on that server. This involves sharing of all of the software applications and the physical server. In some cases, shared hosting is affordable because the actual cost to operate a hosting server is divided between multiple users. If you want to place huge data on a website and you are expecting high traffic, then shared hosting will be not perfect for you.
Collocated Hosting
Collocated hosting means business owners purchase their own server that is placed within the facilities of the web hosting company. One major benefit of collocated hosting is that business owners are able to install applications and scripts as needed. Business owners are completely responsible for the server.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting means the companies will have the server all to themselves and dedicated for their website. This gives them faster performance because all the resources of the server are dedicated for their website. Dedicated hosting is best for big companies because it is more expensive than all other plans.
What Do You Need to Know?
You must have complete knowledge of requirements before making the final decision for purchasing a web hosting service. Basically, you need to focus on following questions before making any decisions:
What type of website needs to be designed?
Will the website need special software?
Are Windows applications needed?
How much space will be required?
What is the desired amount of traffic?
Furthermore, it’s very important to know the reliability of the web host chosen. A website that remains down will lose a lot of potential customers and visitors will become frustrated if they constantly find your website in not responding state.
For business owners that are new to the Web World, I’ll suggest them to start with a reputable shared hosting from a reputable company. It will be easy for them to maintain and it’s affordable also. Additionally, upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server is always a possibility is needed.
