A web hosting service also known as a web host is a type of Internet hosting Service that gives individuals and organizations the chance to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web.
When planning on building your website, you have to think of hosting your website as well. Without your website been hosted, your website won’t be available for visit.
To host a website, you don’t need to have any experience in coding or configuring a server. The technicality part is taken care of already, though there are some hosting options like Virtual Private Server or Dedicated server where technical knowledge is needed to get it working.
What do you need?
So, for this, you will need three basic things; your website, the domain name, and web hosting.
Your website which is the site you have built or building or plan on building. There are several ways through which you can build a website, the most popular being through the use of a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress, which is very popular for building websites.
Your domain name is the address where your website is situated; it is what people type so as to visit your website. There are several domain extensions examples .com .org .net and country-level domain examples .co.uk .ng etc., It is what people will type in when they want to visit your site.
Your hosting, is of course what is used to host your website.
Depending on the type of website that you have, or will be building, then you will choose the hosting option most suited for your requirements.
The different types of hosting
As we mentioned previously, there are different hosting options available. The one you use will depend on the website you want to build; but most people use the Shared option mostly as it is more practical and affordable.
Below we will look through the various hosting options you’ll find available at the majority of hosting companies.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the popular hosting option since it cheaper compared to the other options. Here, the people share the resources allocated by the server that they are using; meaning there will be limits a lot of things (e.g., disc space, data transfer, emails and domain accounts that you will be creating and using). Most hosts give different choice of shared hosting options and each option having varying limitations.
So in Shared Hosting, you don’t need any technical knowledge or experience and a lot a hosts tend to use the cPanel management system; this is because the management system is very easy to use and the administration panel helps to manage your hosting account.
VPS Hosting
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) can be likened to shared hosting, but here, you will have the ability to run your own virtual server while using the provided resources allocated to you by the web host. Virtual Private Server hosting gives you access to greater resources than the ones gotten from shared hosting, so it is a better hosting option for people who have medium sized business or run e-shops and have a reasonable amount of traffic to the sites.
Here, the user must have at rudiment knowledge/experience on how to run a server, for a beginner, Virtual Private Server Hosting is not advisable because they may find things a little difficult to understand.
Dedicated Hosting
This the Oga patapata of them all. This is what we call the ‘Premium Service’. In Dedicated Hosting, the entire server, and all its resources are for you i.e., you are the only one on the server. You have full control over the server. You can install software, operating system and whatsoever addons you want to be on the server. It will give greater power which will result to a better performance unlike other types of hosting. It has range of options as well, so you pick the one you want.
Technical knowledge is highly required in order to use and maintain the server. Some Host as offer services of helping the naïve users manage the server. This arrangement is quite expensive.
What is the right type of hosting for me?
Usually, I encourage people especially SMEs to pick the Shared Hosting option as it is the most suitable option. This is choice is for those who are just getting to know about the world of hosting and websites; this is because this option does not require any technical know how as all the technical aspects of the server is being managed completely by the web host. It is the best choice for new websites or websites that do not have heavy amount of traffic.
If you own a website that is quite large (e.g., an e-commerce site or educational website having a number of courses and members), then I will advise you to pick something a little more powerful than the Shared Hosting, which the Virtual Private Service would be the most preferable. A website that has heavy amount of traffic should use a dedicated server.
Before picking a web hosting package, speak to the host or an expert so that they can suggest the best option for you based on your requirement. Also ask your host if there is a clause for upgrading your hosting account with little or no disruption on your website.
NB: We are running a 30% discount on all hosting packages this October. Kindly reach out to us on WhatsApp, Email or Instagram to enjoy this offer!
