What is a Web Hosting Company?

What is a Web Hosting Company? A web hosting company uses huge banks of computers called servers to store websites and to serve them to internet users around the world.

Once you have decided what your new website is about and what you are going to call it, you then need to decide which web hosting company you are going to use.

People often think that their website is stored on their own computer, and yes a local copy usually is, but the main website itself is held in a specially configured computer at a web hosting company, where it can be easily accessed via the internet.

Choosing the right hosting company can be difficult as on the surface they both appear to do the same thing. However there are differences that you need to be aware of. The first difference you might be aware of is the Operating System that they use. The two most popular are Windows and Linux but to be honest for 99% of us either will do and as Windows tends to be more expensive Linux would be my reccommendation.

Speaking of cost, when you sign up with a hosting company you are charged a fee to host your website for a set period of time. You would usually agree to a time period, which can be anything from 3 months to several years. You would then be given the choice of paying for the hosting in one single payment or to have it split into equal monthly amounts for the period chosen. Price therefore is a factor when choosing a web hosting company.

The amount of space allocated to your website on the hosting company’s server is sometimes limited sometimes not. Initially this might not be an issue but it could become one as your website grows in size. Some web hosting companies offer you a free website domain name with their hosting packages, but not all so make sure yours does.

The same goes for bandwith. This refers to how busy your website can be. If you only expect a handful of visitors then it doesn’t really matter but most website owners are looking for as many visitors as possible so, just to be on the safe side, always choose a web hosting company that provides unlimited bandwidth.

Some web hosting companies allow you to add more domain names to your main hosting account. This is beneficial if you plan to create more websites in the future as you then just pay for the domain name without needing to pay for more hosting, so choose one with unlimited add-on domains.

Finally if you are going to be using blogging software like WordPress, or content management systems like Joomla you want to choose a web host that has an easy one click install for these otherwise you will have to set up databases manually which if you have not done it before is no fun at all.

I have been using the same web hosting company for many years now. I chose them because they offer all of these features. They provide unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, free domain names, unlimited add-on domains and one click installations and all at a lower price than many of the others. I have included a link to them below if you want to have a closer look at my recommended web hosting company.

Want to find out more about the web hosting company I recommend, or visit my site to find out more about What is a Web Hosting Company?.