Web Hosting Description
Web hosting is a service that web hosting distributors offer so that you can put your site online.
How can people observe your website?
When you set up a site and you wish other people to spot it, you will have to publish (or upload) it to a server. If you attempt to make the web site discoverable on the Internet by web hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it always online, which is why website hosting services came into being.
How does web hosting work?
Web hosting corporations provide you with hard disk space for your web site on their high-power computers (web servers) and ensure constant Internet access. When someone writes your web address (e.g. www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's address bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can see the content of your web site.
Hosting varieties
With the development of web technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to satisfy the various requirements of web site possessors, including shared website hosting services, VPS server hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.
Shared website hosting
Shared hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where one single web server is shared between many users who are restricted by the CPU, web traffic and web content space quotas that they have been allotted. This form of hosting is typically less expensive - you don't need to purchase the entire hosting server in advance, as it is shared between many customers, and the hosting vendor can afford to provide much more modest prices. It is also much easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-installed with all the required software and the hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance tasks and software updates on your behalf.
The setback of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the server's system resources with other customers and if a given website becomes very busy it may affect (and slow down) the rest of the sites on that hosting server, but most web hosting suppliers, including us at Saints Hosting, have protection platforms at work that impede that from happening.
A definition of a web hosting service
Because shared website hosting is the most common form of web hosting, the majority of web hosting vendors and hosting users simply refer to it as hosting or website hosting. As there is an enormous rivalry on the website hosting market, most hosting service providers try to provide cheap prices and gifts with their web hosting services. We, for example, offer different website hosting plans and two billing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your resources. If you pick the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a present - one free domain registration.
VPS web hosting
VPS is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Server. The VPS web hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated server web hosting solution. If your site outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting plan, a virtual server is an excellent choice. Virtual Private Server web hosting account holders still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS web server hosting customers, but the physical machine is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own dedicated resources and can be configured practically like a real dedicated web server. The upside is that the CPU and the RAM memory on a VPS server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization technology offers you much more freedom to configure your VPS hosting server, but it also presupposes a more advanced degree of technical competence.
Dedicated Web Hosting
With the Dedicated Web Hosting solution, the user obtains a whole dedicated web hosting server and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most flexible of all web hosting solutions and offers plenty of configuration options - the dedicated server web hosting users can pick the hardware and software specifications that will satisfy their needs. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated server hosting plan is a perfect option for a popular business portal, for example - you will not share the physical machine's system resources with anyone else and will acquire root-level access. You will exercise complete control over the server, which will allow you to make any configuration modifications that you might need. The disadvantage of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a more advanced level of technical competence is required - unless you employ an IT pro, it will be your duty to administer and configure the dedicated server. The dedicated server hosting solution also costs far more, because the cost of the physical server isn't shared among any other users.
A website hosting advice for novices
If you are just beginning to build your website and are seeking a web hosting solution to start out with, the shared hosting solution persists to be the most relevant choice. If your site outgrows your shared website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and requires no migration of your data, since only the parameters of your account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting package to a more advanced one at any particular moment without worrying about the time left before the expiration date. Furthermore, if you eventually reach the most advanced shared web hosting plan and still need more system resources (which is great sometimes - it implies that your website's popularity has risen!), there always is the option to migrate to a Virtual Private Server or a dedicated hosting platform without needing to switch hosting service providers.
| Basic | Delux | Ultra | Entry |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $4.75 / month | $11.75 / month | $17.16 / month | $3.50 / month |