Web Hosting - The Basics Everyone Should Know

What is web hosting?

This is a question we are asked nearly every day. Web hosting is the foundation on which your website is built. In other words, if you don't have good web hosting, your website won't be able to exist at all. That means no visits, no sales, and no profits.

So what is web hosting? Basically, it is a service that makes your website available online for people to see and access. All websites consist of a large number of files. These files contain the information (coding) that give the web page the look and feel, and contain the information that your visitor sees. Without website hosting, you just have a bunch of files that no one can see.

Why does website hosting matter?

Well, as mentioned above, without it, you will not be able to have a website at all. So, in that sense, it is absolutely critical that you get good website hosting.

Because web hosting is an essential part of having a website, which web host and hosting plan you choose matters. Choosing the wrong web hosting provider has a massive impact on how your website functions.

Your web hosting provider affects the following:

1. Page loading times. You can have the best looking website on the planet, but if it loads slow your visitors will leave. Page load times are also a factor Google's page ranking, so the faster your website the happier Google is.

2. Website scaling. Depending on your hosting provider, you may be limited in the resources allocated to your website. The provider may choose to how many visitors your site can have as well as the amount of file storage you can have.

3. Customer support for issues or crashes.

How much does website hosting cost?

Well, the price varies greatly depending on the type of hosting you get. You can get very cheap hosting that costs less than $10 per year all the way to high end ecommerce

hosting that costs thousands of dollars per year. However, if you want to get the most from your website, you need to consider more expensive plans that are generally in the range of $40-150 per month.

That's a crazy price difference, which is why hosting is separated into 4 categories:

• Shared hosting: This is the cheapest hosting option. With shared hosting you are sharing a computer with any other number of websites. Because you're sharing the resources on that server with a number of other site, your website performance tends to be sluggish and could result in downtime. Share hosting usually costs $25-200/year.
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting: VPS hosting typically costs between $250- 600/year. With a VPS, your website will share the same server with a limited number other clients, but each client will have its own “virtual” server and be allocated its own resources.
• Dedicated Hosting: A dedicated hosting service costs between $1500 and $24000 per year. As the name suggests your website gets a server all to itself and doesn't have to share resources with any other site.
• Managed Hosting: Managed hosting is the best option for most website owners. Managed website hosting costs between $40-150 per month, depending on the services provider. Managed hosting is a VPS service that allows you to host your website, but have someone else manage the software updates, backups, security for your website and the health of your server.

Looking for web hosting?

At Misfit Media, we offer a fully managed web hosting solution. Why choose us? Most managed hosting providers only manage at the server level. Choose us because unlike other managed hosting services, we actually handle all of the software updates, SSL Certificates, site security, offsite backups, and more for $47/month.