Hosting, or wordpress hosting, is the business of housing and serving (and optionally maintaining) your web site(s) or applications. Web hosting services provide valuable services to the guest (customer) in exchange for a renting fee.
Those valuable services are;
● Saves you from investing into costly equipment (the physical server)
● Saves you from maintaining the equipment and OS (you just take care of your website)
● Resources such as CPU, memory or storage are scalable; in just a few clicks you can double, triple or even multiply by 10 your resources, or decrease them
● You have access to high-bandwidth speeds, i.e. your website displays faster than if you were handling it on your own
Several additional features are also made available to the guests; email hosting, FTP server to upload all your files, automatic installation of popular web products (WordPress, Joomla, etc.), website building tools, etc.
Subscribing is usually a straightforward process; you choose the type of hosting you want, the specs you require, you pay, and you’re good to go. Just have to point your domain name to your website hosting service provider’s server (or register a new domain name with them) and upload your files or create your website in a matter of a few clicks. Someone used to this process can have a brand-new web site up and running in a matter of minutes.
There are mainly 3 types of hosting, usually all offered by the same hosting companies.
Web Shared hosting
It is the most popular hosting type. It is also the cheapest. Usual monthly fee is between 5 and 15 US$.
With web shared hosting, you share a physical server with other customers. You share its CPUs, its memory, its storage space, and its internet access.
The Pros: it’s cheap, and it’s very easy to use. The hosting company provides you with some kind of control panel (like cPanel or Plesk), which makes administrative tasks easy (creating email accounts, checking used space, copying files around, etc.).
The Cons: You basically can’t secure resources with this type. If your neighbors have power-hungry web applications, your own website might starve and not be as responsive as you’d like it to be. In addition, this plan doesn’t scale well; you can’t upgrade the resources you have (except storage space).
VPS hosting
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. This type of hosting service is a huge improvement compared to web shared hosting; here you still share a physical server with others, but you have a virtual server reserved to you. YOU decide of this server’s specifications, i.e. CPU, memory, storage, and internet access. No more fighting with the neighbors to get CPU time or as much memory allocated as possible. This type of hosting usually costs between 15$ and a few hundred dollars monthly.
The Pros: Highly scalable. In a few clicks you get whatever specs you want.
Part of the resources are reserved to you; your website will never go down if you choose your plan wisely.
The Cons: You usually don’t have a control panel so administrative tasks have to be done somehow manually.
You’re in charge of the OS maintenance, which not everyone can do. Your hosting provider will gladly do it for you… for a fee.
Dedicated Hosting
With this type of hosting, you can rent an entire physical server. No sharing at all with other customers. You get the full power of a (powerful) server. Only very heavy applications or websites need this kind of firepower. It’s difficult to imagine an individual in need of such powerhouse. Prices go from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands of dollars monthly.
The Pros: Can’t find more powerful. You can do whatever you want with it, everything runs on that beast.
The Cons: Expensive.
Doesn’t scale as well as VPS (you can add memory and hard disks, but it won’t be done with just a few clicks). You’re in charge of everything concerning your server, all the OS maintenance, and also the monitoring of the hardware’s health.
Which Plan Should You Choose?
There are many factors to take into account, but here are some guidelines.
Shared Web Hosting: individual’s site, not more than a few hundreds visits per day.
VPS Hosting: Commercial site. Resources-hungry web application such as a forum or CMS.
Dedicated Hosting: Commercial site with super-heavy web applications or mission-critical applications.
If you’re in the grey areas between those categories, you’ll have to make a choice. Ask around, see what specs your application requires, and choose a plan that fits your requirements.
How to Choose a Hosting Provider?
This is unfortunately a trial and error process. There are factors you can check before subscribing to a hosting plan, but some things you can check only after you’ve started using the hosting service.
Price is an important factor, of course. However, cheaper might not be better. Even if you pay a cheap price, if your website doesn’t display half of the time then you haven’t made a good deal. Keep price in your mind at all times, but don’t let it decide everything.
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Site availability. Will your site be available all the time, or is the server hosting it often down? Hosting providers try to give 100% uptime, but for some providers who cram hundreds of customers into single servers, this is difficult to maintain for web shared hosting. Site availability will unfortunately be something difficult to check ahead of subscribing a hosting plan. My best advice would be to subscribe to a monthly plan first, see how well the server handles your site and change to a yearly plan if you’re satisfied after a few months of use.
Support. When you’re in trouble (e.g. your site is down), believe me, you want someone to help you as soon as possible. Good support starts pre-sale. This means you should contact the provider before subscribing a plan; ask about anything and see how and how fast they reply. If they take 2 days to reply or reply to you with a pre-defined format (“a canned reply”) or with a condescending tone, forget it. Run away.
Use trial or money-back guarantee. Prefer trials over money-back guarantees (because with some providers you really have to fight to get your money back). Build a website quickly and test everything thoroughly. Raise support requests and see how they handle them. Any red flag, leave. Don’t hope it will get better. There are many providers out there, you can find one which will satisfy you now, no need to wait for the future.
 your web site(s) or applications. Web hosting services provide valuable services to the guest (customer) in exchange for a renting fee.){kind=link}