Web Hosting Explained
Introduction
Domain and Hosting are two essential things that you need to have to make your dream website live.
Many websites are offering the proper domain name registration and web hosting plan for website businesses to choose from.
While a domain name should be the most unique of all domain names existing in the world of the Internet, web hosting is entirely different.
Let’s first understand how websites work.
Domain and Hosting
Just as everybody has their names, websites have their names known as Domain Names which are stored in DNS server-Domain Name System. DNS is a directory of all internet domain names and understands only numbers. The Domain name is understood by humans but servers understand IP addresses. So, the DNS server checks into multiple servers to match the IP and directs the user to the entered website name.
In simple words, let us assume that you purchased land and start building your house. The place/land where your house stands are similar to the host and your address is your domain name.
Similarly, the purpose of the website is to be accessed by anyone from any corner of the world. To fulfill this goal, a website has to be hosted by a web host that stores all the necessary information in form of website files, technologies, and services in the server for anyone to reach your website by the address. Just as we store all the necessary information in the hardware, in the host computer; we do the same in the webserver. However, the hardware access is limited to the host computer only but since the server is a web server- Websites are accessible from any part of the world.
A typical function of a web host is to store all the necessary information for the website to load and provide data backup, firewall protection, email services, website plugins, website building tools, encryption, safety, technical support, etc.
Top 3 Web Hosting in 2022
let us look at the top 3 recommendations of 2022
Cloudways Hosting
As the name suggests “Cloud”, this hosting is a PaaS- Platform as a service cloud server which means the servers are accessible throughout the internet while the databases and software run on those servers. Starting in 2011, this platform can be scaled up for hosting resources and designed as per the requirements of the company by their in-house developers.
It has 5 cloud providers that offer infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to them
- Digital Ocean
- Vultr
- Google Compute Engine
- Amazon Web Services or AWS
- Linode
Features
- Being a Managed Hosting program, it handles and administers the website very efficiently.
- It has caching layer to speed up the website loading time.
- Superfast loading page time owing to Memcached, Apache, Varnish, and Nginx.
- Cloudways takes care of the site migration.
- SSD-based hosting and in-built caches.
- Operates on Content Delivery Network in which there are geographically distributed servers that speed up web content delivery. It depends on the area from which the user enters the website name; the nearest servers get the web content delivered to the users.
- Auto-healers resolve the risk of crashing.
- Security: Usage of Firewalls, SiteLock Protection, build in SSL, and encryption.
- One-click application installation.
- All PHP applications are supported by the Cloudways hosting.
- Innovative Control Panel.
- Team collaboration tools.
- Extensive support to e-commerce with user-friendly support managed security and storage.
- 24/7 support in case of emergency.
- Supported e-commerce platforms WooCommerce, Magento, and Prestashop.
- Although most enterprises and e-commerce businesses use Cloudways hosting, some famous websites running on Cloudways are quadlayers and learnwoo etc.
Hostinger
Hostinger is a web hosting service and domain name registrar that provides the facility of an inbuilt website builder.
Unlike the Cloudways hosting program, Hostinger has one of the cheapest plans that offer a variety of features and add-ons.
Offers a variety of hosting types such as
- Shared hosting
- Cloud hosting
- Email Hosting
- Managed WordPress Hosting
Features
- Windows VPS
- SSL certification
- Website builder: It has a type of drag and drop website builder that makes professional websites. The easy-to-do website builder that has all the necessary templates to build every kind of website like an e-commerce website, portfolio website, corporate website and informational website, etc.
- Best uptime rates: Hostinger has 99.99% uptime rates, this is a need in almost every business.
- Fast loading speed: 150 ms is the said speed on which Hostinger is said to load.
- Bandwidth: Hostinger allows 100 GB Bandwidth which is the highest one in the market.
- Unlimited Subdomains
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Disk Storage
- Automated Backups are done either daily or weekly.
- WordPress: Powered by LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress, it has SEO friendly site map.
- 24/7 customer support
- 30- day money-back guarantee.
- Mostly popular for small businesses, 1.2% of the entire websites on the internet are hosted on Hostinger.
- Famous clients of Hostinger are goodreader, wesclark, and worldindustries etc.
Blue Host
Blue Host is a hosting platform established in 2015 and is one of the cheapest available options for small businesses, freelancers, and artists. You can buy the domain name from Bluehost as well.
It offers three types of hosting
- WordPress Managed Hosting: Recommended by WP itself
- Shared Hosting
- E-commerce Hosting
Features
- Fast loading speed
- Premium Cloudflare CDN for free.
- Reduced server latency.
- Templates for beautiful designs.
- Encryption and protection from DDoS attacks.
- Free SSL certificate.
- Secure payment gateways, invoices, chat windows, and fully customizable stores.
- Analytics of Bluehost dashboard.
- Money-back guarantee
- 24/7 support
- Mostly used by small businesses, artists, and developers as portfolio sites.
- Some popular websites using Bluehost are jesusdaily, snow and shopwss etc.
Conclusion
If we compare the three of them, clearly we can segment them based on their users and target audience.
Cloudways are opted for by high-end tech companies and e-commerce platforms.
As it only provides Managed cloud hosting. It doesn’t provide a shared hosting environment.
Priced high, this hosting provides a variety of scalable development environments to the companies for more enhanced and customized hosting.
The other two- Hostinger and the Bluehost, are opted for by small businesses, solopreneurs, freelancers, artists, etc. Both of them are the cheapest ones in the market but out of the two Hostinger proves to be the cheapest as per the monthly payment option while Bluehost is cheaper if billed for a longer time.
Recommendations:
SMALL BUSINESS/ARTIST/FREELANCER= Hostinger or Bluehost.
ENTERPRISE/BUSINESS = Cloudways.