What is web hosting?
Web hosting is where and how you store, publish, and serve your website to the world. Let’s say you want to make your website viewable to visitors, customers, or a select group of people. In order to make your website available to the world, you will need web hosting services. You can get web hosting service from any one of thousands of web hosting companies and web hosting providers.
Types of web hosting services
There are dozens of various types of web hosting available on the market today. Some hosting companies provide services to a specific niche market while others provide hosting to a general market. Each of the following are available in two operating system platforms - Linux and Windows.
- Shared web hosting (most common)
- Virtual private servers (VPS)
- Virtual dedicated servers (VDS)
- Dedicated servers
- Managed dedicated servers
- Semi-dedicated servers
- Application server hosting
- Cloud hosting
- Grid hosting
- File hosting
- Database hosting
- Email hosting
- Blog hosting
- Business hosting
- Ecommerce hosting
- cPanel hosting
- Reseller hosting
- Windows hosting
- Linux hosting
What you can expect to pay for web hosting services
Web hosting prices are all over the map. You can get web hosting free (usually sponsored by obtrusive advertisements) or you can expect to pay anywhere from $1 to $100,000 or more for web hosting services. Generally, you can find excellent shared web hosting services from a reliable web hosting provider for around $5-$10 a month. More expensive web hosting is generally for larger organizations or extremely busy websites.