One of the key points in a website's success is its Hosting services.
Can you imagine a website which is not always accessible due to poor hosting services? Or imagine that your are looking for an urgent information, you traced the website in question and you wait and wait for the website to load..
The problems caused due to poor hosting, is a disadvantage for your website and your company as well.
In order to help you choose, the best hosting services for you among the various prices and services provided, we decided to give you some information about web hosting in general.
Web hosting is an internet service, which allows your website to be online and accessible 24hours/day, using special hardware (web servers, data lines e.t.c.). There are various factors that can secure the best quality of hosting services, such as:
- Web servers must be located in specific environmental and technical conditions. That is why they are located in Data Centres. Data centres ensure the continuous function of all hardware, since they are equipped with back up power supplies, environmental controls(e.g. air conditioning, fire suppression, security devices e.t.c.) and many more.
- The hardware used, should be of a reliable manufacturer, with large storage capacities(hard disks), with high processing power(CPU power), and very large RAM memory. Due to the fast development of technology, even nowadays, a web server aged 5 or 6 years may already be outdated and maybe it cannot support modern hosting requirements.
- The access to control panel and to the operating system of the hardware, as well as the physical access to the web servers, are critical factors to the functionality and efficiency of the server.
It is understood that hosting prices depend on the hardware used, the physical location of the hardware as well as the management of it.
The second key factor of the hosting pricing is the type of hosting you select. There are three major hosting types. Extended post with pros and cons of each one, you will be given soon.
- Dedicated Servers: In this case, as owner of the website, you have exclusive use of hardware (CPU power, hard disks, memory, bandwidth e.t.c.). In dedicated hosting you have full management of software and operating system. Dedicated hosting is advisable to websites with enormous amount of data provided and a lot of traffic.
- V.P.S.: A Virtual Private Server, as its name indicates, is a virtual machine which runs its own copy of operating system, and you as owner, have full access to that operating system. Partitioning a single web server to appear as multiple servers, is increasingly common. Choosing this type of hosting, you can have the benefits of a dedicated server at a lower cost.
- Shared Hosting: It refers to web hosting where many websites reside on one web server. Each website has its own section to keep it seperate from others. It is the most economical option, since many people share the cost of server maintenance. One of the main disadvantages is that you can not have system administration. Part of Shared Hosting is the Low performance Shared Hosting, which refers to hosting to servers of lower specifications, most probably outdated, with low CPU power, lower capacity hard disks, less memory available, smaller rate of transmission (smaller bandwidth used).
As you can understand, hosting pricing depends on various factors. A very low price may refer to hosting to a very distant datacenter(U.S.A. or Australia), or hosting to outdated hardware, or hosting to lower specifications hardware. All these factors may have negative impact on the efficiency of your website.
An extended market research is advisable in order to decide on the hosting package which will cover your needs and will meet your expectations.