Everybody knows that the internet is the largest frontier for the up and coming business person.
Everybody and their mother have shown interest in setting up a website of their own to sell their product, service, or just communicate with other people.
But where do these websites start, and how do they go about getting online?
In this article, we will show you what web hosting is all about, and why you need it in order to start a website.
Web hosting is a way to get information from your computer out to the customer or viewer.
In most cases, your internet connection is too slow to support the massive amounts of traffic that may come to your website, and that’s why there is hosting companies.
A server is a like a giant hard drive that stores your website information and releases it to people when your website is visited.
Web hosting companies usually have hundreds or thousands of servers to make them run faster and store more information.
The internet servers that are within these hosting companies are hooked to the fastest internet connections possible to make sure that your website gets to the internet faster.
These fast connections are usually not available in residential parts of the grid, so it is not common for people to host servers from their own house.
There are different types of web hosting ranging from shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting.
3 Most popular types of India web hosting for beginners
1. Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common form of hosting because it is the cheapest.
Shared web hosting services bank on their customers not getting too much traffic to their websites.
They pack as many websites into one server as possible offering the cheapest prices, as well as unlimited space.
This is very appealing to the first time web hosting customer, but there are some considerations to take into account when thinking about starting up your website.
Although shared hosting services offer unlimited space, they do have limits on their bandwidth, which will determine how many people can visit your site in one day without crashing.
Most shared hosting services can handle 1000-2000 unique visitors per day without having a problem.
This may not seem like much, but for the price, it is a perfect way to start out and then see how your site goes from there.
2. VPS Web Hosting
VPS hosting offers a dedicated IP address, allowing for a faster delivery to your viewers.
The most basic VPS packages can handle more users than shared hosting, but will run you a little bit more money than you would pay for shared hosting.
VPS usually only has a few different websites on one server, allowing for faster speeds and a less confusion.
With VPS packages, only a certain amount of space is allotted to you, and a certain amount of bandwidth.
Although this is not unlimited, it can still be way more space than you would ever need on your website.
3. Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated hosting is considered the best of the best when it comes to web hosting.
You get your own server that is managed, and all the space and bandwidth that is on the server is yours.
This does wonders for the speed and safety of your website, making dedicated hosting as the most desirable kind of web hosting.
Although most people would love to be on a dedicated server, most people cannot even come close to affording it.
Dedicated servers can just start at $200 a month, which is not necessarily a budget type of hosting service.
However, if you understand the pricing between dedicated servers, and what it would take to house and maintain your own servers, dedicated is still cheaper.
Now that you know the basics of web hosting, you are prepared to go out there and host your own website.
Remember, you can always start with shared hosting, and then you can decide if you should step up from there.
Dedicated servers are the most reliable, but the price is very expensive.
Just decide what you really need and go for it, there is always room on the internet.
With the emerging world markets, the internet is still reaching millions and millions of new users per day, so you might as well get a piece of the action.
4 Reasons why free web hosting is a bad idea
We will discuss here why free web hosting is a bad idea. It all starts with the word “free”, and you will learn why these web hosting companies market their web hosting as free.
Reason 1: Loaded with advertisements
Everyone that owns a website is usually looking to do one of two things; either make money or get a point across.
For most of us, it is making money that lures us into thinking of making a website.
The money made can come from a few different ways, but we will focus on advertising and selling products as the main ways websites make money.
With free web hosting providers, the companies will load your websites with advertisements in order to make money.
You might be thinking “don’t I get a cut of that?”, and the answer is absolutely not.
In order to run and house web servers there needs to be employees, a physical location, and room for error.
In order to pay for all this, since you are not paying for the web hosting, they have to think of original ways to make money.
Once your site is on their server, they have the right to post ads on your site, post popups and pop-unders, and monetize your site to the way they want.
Reason 2: You can get blacklisted to the spammer directory
Being that spammers are notorious for using free web hosts, you may be perceived as being a part of the spamming, so your site will get blacklisted.
You may ask “how is this possible?”.
It is because when you are on a free server, everybody on that server shares the same IP address, meaning that everyone who is on that IP address is responsible for the content that one site in that server may put out.
So if one person that is on the server decides they want to spam, then everyone gets blacklisted and your in the dark.
My advice is, if you decide that you are going to develop a meaningful site in any way, it is your best choice to go with a paid form of web host.
There are plenty out there for under $5 a month, and spammers are less likely to use these types of hosting plans.
Reason 3: Hacking danger
So now if you decide to go with a free hosting company, your information is available to the public, and anybody else who has access to that server.
This means that anybody with the knowledge of hacking can get on to your site and do what they want to it.
Of course it is illegal, but in the world of the internet you can never be safe.
The internet is everywhere, including very remote parts of the world, and you know how bored the people in remote Siberia probably are.
There are people that hack websites for fun, and the best forum for that is free hosting plans.
Reason 4: Little to no customer support
When you pay for a web hosting company, you are not just paying for the safety and security of a managed server, you are paying for the support too.
With a free hosting plan, since you are not paying for the services, there is not reason for these companies to go out of their way to help you out.
Like I said before, they are in it to advertise on your website and make money off of that.
They don’t care if you can’t log in to your control panel, because they just want to make money and be left alone.
Conclusion:
As you can see, using a free web hosting service can be annoying and not worth the time.
They will be loaded with advertisements unrelated to your business, and the servers are not guaranteed any uptime.
Spammers share the same IP address as you, making you a target for being blacklisted if things go that way.
If you are just starting out, you can get very affordable hosting plans with great support.
All in all, stay away from free hosing sites if you want to build any sort of reputable business.
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