How Shared Hosting Works

Shared hosting is a service that companies provide so that you can get your website online.

How can people find your web site?

When you develop a website and you would like other people to discern it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a server. If you try to make the website available on the web by shared hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it always up and running, which is why web hosting services came into being.

How does shared hosting work?

Hosting suppliers offer you disk drive storage space for your web site on their high-end computers (servers) and guarantee continuous network uptime. When someone writes your website address (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the server where they can take a look at the content of your site.

Hosting varieties

With the development of Internet technologies, several types of web hosting services have come into being to match the different expectations of website possessors, including shared hosting services, private virtual server web hosting services and dedicated hosting services.

Shared website hosting

Shared website hosting is the most commonly used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to begin with. It is a service where one web server is shared among many shared web hosting account holders who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and web hosting server hard drive storage space quotas that they have been apportioned. This form of web hosting is typically cheaper - you don't need to buy the whole web hosting server upfront, as it is divided between plenty of users, and the hosting supplier can afford to provide much lower prices. It is also easier to use - the server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance procedures and security updates on your behalf.

The negative side of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's resources with other hosting users and if a given web site becomes really busy it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the web sites on that web server, but the majority of web hosting vendors, including us at DuoServers Web Hosting, have protection systems in place that obstruct that from taking place.

A description of a hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most common form of web hosting, the majority of web hosting suppliers and hosting customers simply refer to it as web hosting or website hosting. As there is an extensive competition on the website hosting marketplace, the majority of hosting vendors endeavor to provide moderate prices and gifts with their hosting services. We, for example, provide different website hosting packages and two billing options - monthly and yearly, based on your funds. If you select the yearly billing cycle, you will get a bonus - one charge-free domain name registration.

VPS hosting

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your web site grows beyond the resources offered by your shared hosting account, a virtual server hosting plan is a suitable option. VPS web hosting users still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other Virtual Private Server web hosting customers, but the hard drive is partitioned using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own guaranteed resources and can be configured almost like a full-fledged dedicated server. The advantage is that the CPU and the memory on a VPS web hosting server are not shared. In addition, the virtualization software gives you much more freedom to configure your private virtual web server, but it also calls for a higher level of technical expertise.

Dedicated Server

With the Dedicated Server solution, the user gets an entire dedicated web hosting server and can utilize all its resources. The dedicated server web hosting solution is the most flexible of all web hosting solutions and offers numerous customization possibilities - the dedicated server web hosting customers can pick the hardware and software specs that will satisfy their needs. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated hosting plan is an excellent option for a popular business web portal, for example - you will not share the web server's resources with anyone else and will be granted full root-level access. You will have full control over the hosting server, which will permit you to implement any server configuration modifications that you might require. The downside of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a higher degree of technical expertise is needed - unless you employ an Information Technology professional, it will be your responsibility to administer and configure the physical machine. The dedicated hosting solution is also much more high-priced, since the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared among any other customers.

A website hosting recommendation for beginner users

If you are just starting to develop your website and are looking for a hosting solution to start with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most intelligent option. If your web site grows beyond your shared web hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not necessitate migration of your data, because only the parameters of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your hosting package to a more advanced one at any particular moment without having to worry about the number of days remaining until expiration. Also, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared hosting plan and still need more system resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it indicates that your web site's popularity has grown!), there always is the option to switch to a VPS web server hosting platform or a dedicated web server hosting platform without the need to switch hosting providers.