All About Basic Web Hosting
Before you can decide which hosting service is best for you or your company, you must have something to host. At the very least, this is a domain name that you have registered with a domain registrar. This basic step qualifies you for the most basic type of hosting, domain hosting. In this setup, your chosen hosting provider will host your registered domain, so that the domain is linked to a physical server within the internet's nameserver cluster. Usually domain hosting involves no more than a single web page with some sort of description of the site or information about the domain. Sometimes a single email address is included as well. This is sometimes referred to as domain parking.
If you don't have a domain, you can buy one from your selected web host at the same time you purchase your hosting package, dependant on the availability of your desired domain name. So if you don't have a domain name, try to do some somain name research before you go to buy a hosting package. It can be much easier if you buy your domain name from your web host, so you want to be ready.
Once you're ready to buy web hosting, there are several factors that will affect your decision. The cost of web hosting is a major part of deciding which host to use. While most businesses and individuals would prefer an affordable web hosting package, be careful because like in most things you get what you pay for. That's not to say that the cheapest web hosting service will be the worst, it may in fact be the best hosting service there is, but you can usually expect lowest cost web hosting to be directly proportional to the amount of technical know-how and experience you will need to setup your hosting account and to load and maintain your web site content.
Very often, the cost also dictates the amount of control you have over your hosting account and sometimes even your web site. The absolute cheapest web hosting account is a free one, of which there are several. Almost all free web hosting accounts take over a part of each of your web pages to show advertisements that you can't control or get rid of ... and for which you don't get paid. So while a free web hosting account may seem like a good idea, be aware of what you may be giving up.
There is also inexpensive web hosting available, sometimes for as little as 2 or 3 dollars per month. This type of hosting is the first real hosting level at least from a web development point of view. This type of hosting usually comes in a package of services that is offered together for your use in making your site available to the internet and uploading and building your site. Even at this basic level a very robust and quality site can be built, if you have the expertise available both to design the site and to do the programming. Generally to receive this pricing, the hosting company will want you to pay for at least a year in advance. So for about $35USD, you can have the most basic, yet legit hosting account. One of the reasons the price is so low is that several elements of your hosting account are limited or not available to that package.
Generally a hosting service will have several levels of hosting package that provide for more services or services that are less restricted. Of course the price will increase as well, although the best bargains are ususally not the least expensive hosting packages in the long run. If you want to host a web site where you expect a lot of traffic or where you are running an inhouse ecommerce application, you probably want to think about a higher level of hosting known as dedicated hosting. In dedicated hosting, the cost is much higher, so you don't always have to pay a year in advance. Unfortunately, the level of expertise needed is usually beyond most individuals and even some small businesses. So in the long run the costs can really soar for a dedicated hosting service.
There are also many types of specialty hosting available. You can get email hosting if you just need a way for you organization to communicate. Specialized hosting also exists for files. There are numerous picture and video hosting sites available, too. There is reseller hosting, which allows you to start your own hosting business by purchasing server space from a hosting reseller, or to host web sites for your clients. There are even specialized hosting packages based on software your organization may run like Linux, Windows, Front Page or ASP hosting. Please see our other hosting sections for more information.