Shared Hosting Explanation

Shared hosting is a service that web hosting companies provide so that you can publish your site on the World Wide Web.

How can people see your web site?

When you build a web site and you wish other persons to spot it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a server. If you try to make the site reachable on the World Wide Web by shared hosting it on your own PC, there is no way for you to keep it up and running all the time, which is why website hosting services came into existence.

How does shared hosting work?

Web hosting corporations provide you with data storage space for your web site on their powerful computers (web hosting servers) and ensure constant Internet connectivity. When somebody writes your website address (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the hosting server where they can see the content of your website.

Types of web hosting

With the development of Internet technologies, several types of web hosting services have come into existence to answer the various requirements of website owners, among them shared website hosting services, virtual private web server hosting services and dedicated server hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared web hosting is the most common form of hosting, and is also the easiest to start with. It is a service where a single web server is shared among many web hosting clients who are restricted by the CPU, traffic and web hosting server disk storage space quotas that they have been allotted. This type of website hosting is normally less expensive - you don't have to buy the entire server in advance, as it is shared between plenty of clients, and the hosting distributor can afford to offer much more affordable prices. It is also easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-installed with all the required software and the web hosting vendor handles all server maintenance procedures and security updates for you.

The downside of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's resources with other web hosting users and if a given web site becomes very busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the websites on that server, but the majority of web hosting vendors, including us at ReMARK HOSTING, have protection systems at work that prevent that from taking place.

A description of a web hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most common form of web hosting, the majority of web hosting suppliers and hosting clients simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is a considerable rivalry on the website hosting market, most web hosting vendors try to provide low prices and bonuses with their services. We, for example, offer different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your finances. If you choose the annual invoicing cycle, you will obtain a bonus - one free domain name registration.

VPS hosting

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared hosting solution and the dedicated hosting solution. If your site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared hosting account, a virtual private web hosting server package is a suitable option. Virtual Private Server web hosting customers still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS server web hosting account owners, but the physical machine is partitioned using a special virtualization technology so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated web server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a private virtual web hosting server are not shared. What's more, the virtualization software offers you much more freedom to configure your virtual server, but it also calls for a more advanced degree of technical expertise.

Dedicated Hosting

With the Dedicated Hosting solution, the user gets a whole server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated web hosting solution is the most flexible of all website hosting solutions and offers a multitude of customization possibilities - the dedicated server web hosting clients can select the hardware and software specs that will answer their requirements. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated server web hosting package is an excellent solution for a resource-requiring corporate site, for example - you will not share the dedicated server's system resources with anyone else and will be given full root-level access. You will have full control over the web server, which will allow you to implement any server configuration modifications that you might need. The weak side of the dedicated server hosting solution is that a more advanced degree of technical competence is needed - unless you employ an IT expert, it will be your responsibility to administer and configure the dedicated hosting web server. The dedicated web hosting solution is also much more costly, since the cost of the server isn't shared among any other customers.

A hosting tip for beginner users

If you are just starting to develop your site and are looking for a hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the best choice. If your web site grows beyond your shared web hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for instance, this is extremely easy and does not involve migration of your website files, since only the parameters of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any particular moment without worrying about the number of days left before expiration. What is more, if you eventually reach the most advanced shared website hosting plan and still need more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it indicates that your site's popularity has risen!), there always is the option to move to a VPS web hosting server or a dedicated hosting server without having to change web hosting service providers.