If you want to run an online business, blog or company website then you need website hosting. Website hosting or your server is where all the files to your website are stored so they can be publicly viewed.
There are so many options to review when choosing website hosting and price should not be the only factor. Let’s take a look at a few items to look for when you’re doing your research.
Shared Website Hosting
Shared hosting is website hosting in which the service provider serves pages for multiple websites/accounts from a single web server.
Let’s say we are in a room of ten people. All of whom run websites with the same service provider. With shared hosting this means that all ten people would be on the same server. We would not be able to see each other’s files but all of our accounts are on this server.
Shared hosting is a less expensive way to create a web presence but may not be sufficient for websites with high traffic.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Virtual Private Servers mimics a dedicated server within a shared hosting environment. It is technically both shared and dedicated hosting but has less websites/accounts than a standard shared host.
Back to our room example, VPS means that maybe half of the people in the room are on one server and the other half are on another server. VPS limits how many accounts can be on one server and gives you a little more control over what you can do or install. VPS is traditionally more expensive than shared hosting.
Dedicated Website Hosting
Dedicated hosting is website hosting where the entire server is yours. All hardware, RAM, data transfers are yours and only your account is on that machine.
Again, in our room example, if all ten people are running dedicated website hosting than all ten are on their own servers. Dedicated hosting is the most expensive hosting compared to shared or VPS.
Other Website Hosting Things To Look For:
- How many websites can have on your server? If you plan on making more than one website it may be easier to pay for the middle or highest package tier. This way you can create as many websites as needed without ordering a new account, having another set of usernames and passwords, having another billing cycle, etc.
- Where are the servers located? Are they close to your physical location or do they have multiple data centers and you can select where your location is?
- Can you install WordPress or similar content management packages easily?
- Are email addresses included?
Which Website Host Would You Recommend?
We’ve done a lot of research and have a few that we could recommend but to keep this blog post simple we will post our favorite website host, A2 Hosting.
A2 is out of Michigan and has been great to us. Not only do they have incredible servers, affordable prices, FREE SSL certificates on all your top level domains, but the tech support is outstanding. We’ve dealt with a ton of customer support and have come accustomed to waiting a minimum of three days for any type of feedback or comments so imagine our surprise when the first question we had was answered in three hours.
