In a nutshell, website hosting is a place for your website to live. All of the data that creates your web pages, like text, photos, and other essential files, are stored on a host server that internet users can see and interact with. When you upload files to a web host’s server, anyone can view your site by typing in your URL.
The server is connected to the Internet to be accessible to everyone. Website hosts are responsible for keeping the server up and running 24/7. This typically includes implementing security measures and ensuring that your data (texts, photos, and other files like HTML and CSS files) is transferred successfully to your visitors’ browsers.
Business owners often overlook just how important it is to have a reliable website host. With technology constantly evolving and online accessibility now a basic expectation, having your site go down can be a big problem. There are plenty of hosting options out there, including self-hosting, but figuring out which one is right for you can feel overwhelming.
In this article, we’ll break down what to expect from a web hosting company and highlight key things to consider when choosing the best option for your business—both now and in the future.
What Are The 4 Types Of Web Hosting?
Shared Hosting
The most popular type of web hosting service is shared hosting. This is typically used for new users who don’t need many resources (small blogs or local shops). Shared hosting accounts exist on one physical server that hosts multiple websites. These sites share limited resources like disk space, bandwidth, and data.
Local shops with a simple website or personal bloggers benefit from this option as these sites don’t typically need many resources, such as bandwidth, storage, or processing power. These shared resources can be beneficial or detrimental to a website. If a site you share a server with, or your own site, has high resource usage or custom server configurations, this can slow down your site or your shared server sites.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
Similar to shared hosting, a VPS server uses the same machine to host several sites. VPS allocates a set amount of resources to each website. This separation of resources ensures that traffic from another site will not cause performance issues with yours. If your goals exceed the limitations of shared hosting, like root access, customer configurations, and multiple cPanel accounts, VPS is a better fit for your needs.
WordPress Hosting
Also similar to shared hosting is WordPress hosting. While you will still share a server, sharing is limited exclusively to other WordPress websites with WordPress installs. Service and support are tailored to the features of WordPress. Solutions are optimized to maximize WordPress performance.
Dedicated Server Hosting
As its name suggests, dedicated hosting provides your site with a server space that is entirely your own. All of the server’s resources are dedicated to your site completely. These servers are easy to customize. If you have multiple projects that you need to manage, a dedicated server can host multiple sites.
What To Research Before Choosing A Website Host
if you opt to go with a web hosting provider instead of self-hosting, there are many things you need to consider before choosing. Some web hosts include the features mentioned above for free, while others charge a premium for extra benefits. Once you know what features your site will need, we recommend researching potential hosts for their reliability, customer support, speed, security, scalability, and pricing
Reliability
This is the most important thing to look for in a web hosting service. The internet runs 24/7, and your website needs to do the same. Web host providers typically express their uptime as a percentage. The closer that percentage is to 99.9%, the better. We recommend looking through third-party reviews of multiple web hosts to understand better how users of these web hosting services rate and rank their reliability.
Customer Support
Websites can go down for any number of reasons and at any time. When something goes wrong, you want a host that can help fix the problem as soon as it happens. Not all web hosts offer 24/7 service. When comparing hosting services, we recommend verifying what type of customer service they provide so you can always get help when needed.
Speed
It takes less than 1 second for a user to make their opinion about your site. This makes the load speed of your site crucial. Site speed is a benefit of using a web host, which helps search engines, like Google, rank your web pages. User experience also benefits from load speed, which influences dwell time and can help maximize your conversion rate.
It’s important to note that the server’s location can greatly impact your website’s performance. Servers that are closer geographically to your customers will have better speed and response times
Security
As mentioned earlier, web hosts won’t list the exact security features they implement. This protects you and them from security threats. We recommend verifying that your web host offers malware protection, scanning, and DDoS protection to keep your site safe from attacks.
Scalability
If you plan on growing your business, having a web host that can scale with you is one of your best resources. Generally, this comes down to your web host’s ability to increase your data storage capacity. Storage is the main difference between hosting plans, so we recommend researching your site’s actual size.
There are websites where you can check the size of your site and test your page load time. We recommend looking at your visitor count through your analytics. Using both numbers will let you compare what type of plan you need currently and what will suit your future growth.
Pricing
At the end of the day, pricing is the factor you consider when choosing your web host. Compare the services that web hosts offer, and the cost differences, then make a decision that best suits your current needs and immediate future growth.
Common Features of Website Hosts
If the idea of hosting your own website seems daunting, you’ve probably noticed the shiny, marketing-laden text of features that web hosts make a fuss about. We have broken down some of the most common features to look at when considering a web hosting package.
Storage/Disk Space
No matter your business size, everyone needs storage space to accommodate for the code, database, photos, videos and text placed on a website. However, depending on your businesses needs, it’s hard to exactly pin point what you may need. E-commerce websites with thousands of products can often consume a large amount of GB. We have seen some consume as much as 50GB+ in product photography alone! While attorney websites with hundreds of pages may consume less then 10GB since it is mostly text. To help you get an idea of your needs, we put together some common website configurations we experience and how they can impact storage needs.
| Type of Business | Average Site Size |
| Small Service Based Business | 2GB |
| Wedding Photography | 10GB |
| Business with 1000+ Blog Posts | 20GB |
| E-Commerce with 250 Products | 25GB |
| Indie Film Production Company | 50GB |
| Large Enterprise Business | 100GB+ |
**estimates based on random samples, your needs may be different
Keep in mind that if you want to take a backup of your website, you will need at least enough space to store an entire copy of the site on the server. So if you have a 10GB website, then you will need at least 20GB of space to take a backup. Another factor to consider is if you need a development or staging copy of the website! Let me break this example down:
| Small Business with Blog | 3GB |
| Staging environment for testing updates | 3GB |
| Space to backup both sites | 6GB |
| Total | 12GB |
In this example, 12GB is the minimum amount of space needed for a 3GB sized website. Depending on your businesses growth, and how many backups you want to keep, you may want to consider having even more space. For example, keeping daily backups for up to 7 days, or even weekly backups for up to a month, can drastically increase the amount of space needed on your server. Of course, if you are unsure, we recommend consulting with one our our experts!
“I am a huge fan of the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle). I maintain less then 80% consumption of my disk usage needs. This gives me an additional 20% of room for growth or unplanned backups. When I exceed that 80%, I then put in a request to size up my system.”
Bandwidth
Having a good amount of bandwidth helps ensure your site visitors have a good user experience. Bandwidth allows data transfer between your website, visitors, and the web. You can determine your bandwidth needs by looking at your website traffic history. We recommend selecting a web host that fits your needs and accommodates any spikes.
You should note that most web hosts have a limit on the bandwidth they provide. Most internet users will leave a website with a load speed longer than 2 seconds. High traffic can lead to extremely slow load times without the right resources. This can permanently deter returning visitors if they cannot access your site on their first attempt.
Memory
A critical feature to pay attention to is the memory of your site’s servers. Some very common needs for memory include:
- Multiple site visitors connecting to your website at the same time
- Caching site files so they are quick and ready to service to website visitors
- Running a visual editing tool like Elementor or Divi
WordPress using a plugin like Elementor often need a minimum of 256MB of RAM.
Processor (CPU)
The same goes for the central processing unit (CPU), which does the actual processing. The rule of thumb is that the more RAM and CPU your site can work with, the better.
Security
You won’t find any specifics about the type of security a web host provides beyond vague or general terms. Consider it a benefit as it makes it harder for intrusion and attacks on your web host provider and, therefore, you. Security devices and software typically include firewalls, malware and virus scanning, and SSL certificates.
SSL certificates are commonly used to secure credit card transactions and create encrypted connections between your site visitors and your server. Search engines like Google look positively on these certifications as part of their E-E-A-T guidelines which help boost your SERP ranking.
Backup Tool
Few things are worse than your website going down and being unable to resuscitate it. Regularly backing up your website is a vital and often overlooked aspect of your website’s health. Any number of updates can cause your site to go down, and having a backup will save you the migraine of building it up from scratch again. We highly recommend verifying that a web host has a backup tool before using them.
Web Hosting Made Easy
My Website Spot is dedicated to keeping your site up, running, and active, rain or shine. Our experts are here to help you with any of your hosting needs. Whether setting up a new website, migrating an existing site, or setting up dedicated staging environments, we can do it all and much more.
We provide 24/7 monitoring and proactive management for your site while making sure there is always a backup should a catastrophe happen. If any issues arise, we ensure your site is back up and running. My Website Spot is always willing to provide free advice. Drop us a line, and we’ll help you find the perfect web hosting solution for your growing business.
