We’ve all heard of web hosting from time to time, or like most of us we all know what it is or at least we have a very good idea of what web hosting is. Some of us on the other hand do not and that’s where this guide will come in handy. We’re going to cover what a web host is, the different types of web hosts out there, ways to check out if a host is reputable or not, domain names, different aspects of a host and a whole lot more.

We’ll start with the basis and explain what host is and a few things to look for. If we were to search for the term “web host” on Google, we’d return over 85 Million results. That’s far too many for me to go through; I’m not to sure about you guys. With web hosting being so saturated, meaning there are so many web hosting companies to choose from, it’s hard to determine which are reliable and which aren’t.

Before we get into how to choose a web host or what to look out for, let’s talk about web hosting and try to understand it a bit more. There are several types of web hosting out there and determining which one to pay for can be a bit daunting for some of us. We’ll start by first understand what web hosting is, then we’ll talk about each kind type of web hosting so we can better decide which is best for our needs.

What is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is the act of hosting HTML documents, PHP documents, ASP and so on, on a dedicated computer that will serve them to anyone that is interested in viewing them. They can do much more then this, but this is just a basic understand so we can move forward into the different kinds of web hosting.

Anyone with an internet connection and the right tools can, theoretically, become a web hosting company. We need to educate ourselves on this so we know how to look out for companies that do this exact thing. So if you have an internet connection and you can serve any type of web file or download to the general public, then you could consider yourself a web hosting company.

Now we all know this isn’t a good way to do business. There are millions of companies that pay big bucks to house their servers and equipment in DC’s (Data Centers) that can provide the type of service to those servers that they need to actually be considered worthy of hosting something for web use.

So now we have a basic understanding about what a web host is, let’s take a look at the different types of web hosting services out there today. Many of use will only need one of them, but a few of us may opt for something more expensive as it will tailor to their needs better then something less expensive.

Type of Web Hosts

There are quite a few different types of web hosts out there today that we can choose from, we’ll explain each one in the order of importance or should I say experience level. We’ll start with the most basic and move up to the most advanced.

• Free Web Hosting
• Shared Web Hosting
• Reseller Web Hosting
• VPS (Virtual Private Server) Managed
• VPS (Virtual Private Server) Unmanaged
• Dedicated Server Managed
• Dedicated Server Unmanaged
• Colocation

There are probable a few that we may be missing, but this is most if not all of them. Now let’s go over each one so we can better understand which would be right for our needs.

Free Hosting

Free hosting is probable the most appealing of all of them because, well it’s free. But there are very many downsides to it being free that most of us aren’t aware of. First and foremost are the advertisements. The companies that provide free web hosting have a nice little system in place that will place advertisements on each one of your web pages no matter if you want them to or not. This sounds very mean and doesn’t sound legal, but it’s actually why the hosting is free. The advertisements serve as funding for the free hosting companies so they don’t have to charge anything.

Now there are plenty of “real” web hosting companies out there that offer a free service, in return they will normally ask for a link back to their site or that you upgrade after a period of time. These are normally the best companies to go with as they are real hosting companies and when the time comes to upgrade to a better account a simple email would suffice and switching or moving to a new server wouldn’t be needed.

Free hosting companies don’t always offer the same resources and features as a paid service would either. Many of the popular databases aren’t available, due to security reasons. The space is normally little to nothing as is the bandwidth. Really the only thing that is available to use on free web hosting companies are simple HTML web pages and downloads, which can’t actually be linked to from any other place but the account holders web pages.

So why do people find them so attractive? Why else, it’s free.

Shared Web Hosting

Now we move into the more advanced hosting and also the first step of paid web hosting. Shared hosting is what 95% of webmasters will use and will normally always use. Since the web hosting industry is so saturated with millions upon millions of web hosting companies, shared hosting can be as cheap as well free web hosting. Many start at as little as $ 2 - $5 a month and go up from there.

So what does shared web hosting really offer?

It really all depends on the web host, many will offer everything that is needed and then some and some won’t. Many web hosting companies will post a features list for their potential clients to look over, simple check over that list and make sure that everything you need or want is there.

The only downside to shared web hosting is that you’re housed on a server with a few hundred other clients, which in many cases is ok because the servers can handle them. But in a few cases we’ve found web hosting companies way over selling their servers and packing so many on them that they can’t even operate correctly.

So be sure to keep an eye out for slow service and response times as this is a clear indication that hey are over selling themselves and this will result in your site/sites being very slow also.