Website Hosting, Not sure which hosting to choose, between free and paid ones? Here are what aspects you need to consider when choosing the hosting service for your site.
Defining in advance the best hosting for a website is not easy. Free and paid services are available online, and each of these two hypotheses has pros and cons depending on the needs of those who have decided to create the website.
If you are thinking of creating a site, know that the choice of hosting service is one of the first and fundamental decisions you will have to face very carefully. Here are some helpful tips that can help you find the best option.
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What is website hosting?
In information technology, “hosting” is defined as a network service that allocates the pages of a site or web application on a server, thus making them accessible to internet users when they write the associated address in the appropriate research bar. On a practical level, therefore, hosting is the place where the contents of your site are stored and made accessible.
Free hosting: features, pros, and cons
There are several free hosting services available on the web. As expected, this option has several downsides compared to paid hosting, but it can still prove to be the best choice in some cases.
Not everyone, in fact, creates a website for professional reasons. Those who need a website to have fun experimenting and testing ideas and solutions can opt for a free hosting service, which generally offers one or more mailboxes, a limited amount of web space, a database, and a management panel rather than basic services.
Often, free server hosting implies the presence of advertising banners on the web pages made available by the service provider and/or binding clauses in the user license agreements. For this reason, it is advisable to be very careful which one you choose.
Another aspect that generally makes us prefer paid hosting services over free ones is that providers only provide third-level domains for free, not second-level ones. Other negative factors are technical performance and assistance service, which are inevitably poorer than the non “free” options.
Paid hosting: features, pros, and cons
The Internet offers a wide range of paid hosting services, including cheaper and more professional solutions.
First of all, it is necessary to separate between dedicated hosting, a solution that allows exploiting all the server resources for your website, and shares hosting, which is an option in which the same server hosts several websites created by various developers. Obviously, the first choice is preferable, but it requires a significant economic investment, and that is why, apart from large and extremely popular websites, the choice of the most generally falls on shared hosting (or cloud hosting).
There are many factors to consider when choosing a paid hosting service, and it is impossible to list them all, also because they are linked to the needs of those who created and manage the website. Among these, however, the following stand out:
- disk space, i.e., the space you can occupy
- traffic, i.e., the data uploaded and downloaded
- bandwidth, upload and download speed
- data security
- backup automation (useful in case of a hacker attack)
- possibility of multidomain (even those who manage a small website may need a web presence articulated on different domain names)
- number of mailboxes
- easy to use control panel
- assistance from technical support 24 hours a day
Some tips on how to choose to host your website
Before proceeding with the choice of hosting for your website, you would do well to evaluate the online reputation of the various solutions offered by the Net. The experiences lived by other users can help you in your choice, shedding light on the aspects that most closely concern your need. Contacting the hosting service and testing its support service before making the final choice is another recommended action.
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