For your site to be available to visitors at any time of the day or night, it must be stored on an online server. Creating such a server yourself is very difficult – this requires a powerful computer, uninterrupted Internet, and huge energy costs. Therefore, the most convenient and fastest option is to find a suitable hosting site. Hosting is a company that provides a server for your site for rent and ensures its performance. You can buy hosting for both $ 3 and $ 150 per month – it all depends on the specific company and the Hosting. However, if you do not want to spend money, you can find free hosting sites that will be no worse than paid ones. This article will show you how to do this.
Hosting types
We’ve already covered what Hosting is – however, it’s important to find the one that suits your budget and needs.
Virtual hosting stores several sites on one server at once. It’s a bit like renting an apartment with your neighbors – everyone has their room, but the kitchen and bathroom are shared. Maintaining such a server is much lower, so this is the cheapest Hosting, and this is what most sites on the Internet use. Free Hosting mostly falls into this category as well.
Virtual dedicated hosting (VPS) stores site data on several servers at once and differ from the previous type in the level of control and capabilities. You can administer the VPS server yourself by installing the necessary programs and changing the operating system. In addition, the number of sites created is limited only by the server’s capabilities. Such hosting for a website is more expensive and requires more attention from the owner.
Dedicated Hosting provides an entire remote server for you to use. This option is the safest and most reliable – therefore, it is usually used by large corporations. Dedicated Hosting costs up to $ 150 per month and requires maximum control on your part.
Hosting types. Left to right: Shared Hosting, Virtual Dedicated Hosting, and Dedicated Hosting
Bluehost
Hosting sites with affordable prices – from $ 9 to $ 120 per month, depending on the Hosting. Suitable for beginners who are just starting to understand server management.
Hostinger
Website hosting is renowned for its budget pricing and promotions. Hostinger offers Hosting and domain for $ 9.49, but the price drops to $ 1.39 per month during sales.
Signs of a good hosting
Uptime or availability. The fewer outages occur on the server, the higher the uptime. For example, cloudretouch uptime is 99.9%, which means that in the entire history of sites on cloudretouch were unavailable to users for only one-tenth of a percent of the time.
Bandwidth. The amount of information that a site can transmit to visitors over a certain period. The more traffic and the heavier the page, the higher the bandwidth.
Support service. Hosting support may seem like overkill. But this is how the site owners think before the first server crash. Ideally, the hosting should have an online support center and have a callback function and respond promptly on social networks.
Additional features. For example, the ability to receive corporate mail or use advanced SEO tools.
Free Hosting and domain
cloudretouch users get free Hosting for the site and their domain. This allows you to give the company a personality, increase brand value and make it easier for customers to find the site. We have already covered how to register a domain and choose a domain name in detail.