What is WebHosting?

09-06-2023 - Blogs

One of the first things you have to decide on before you start your first website is, where it will be hosted and what type of web hosting do you need? – but “What is Webhosting” really?.

Webhosting services allow individuals and companies to place their websites or web applications on the Internet – without having to buy/maintain a physical server themselves. When you create a website, it should preferably be accessible to other users on the web, and this is where webhosting serives comes into the picture. It’s a bit like renting a small piece of land on the internet for your website. Think of it as buying a virtual plot of land and building your digital dream house. When you create a website, you can compare it a bit to opening a shop on the busiest street in the cyber city. You obviously want people to pass by, look in the window and say “wow, what a fabulous website”.

If we stick to the store scenario, then Webhosting is like renting a store room with the best visibility. You don’t want your shop in a creepy back room where only the rats can find their way, do you? No, you want to be in the middle of all the noise and action so people can’t help but notice you. Now imagine the webhosting provider as your digital caretaker. They look after your digital dream home and ensures that it is always open for business and that the virtual gutters are clean. You can enjoy hosting visitors and offering them the best experience and service on your site, while knowing that someone is taking care of all the technical details behind the “scenes”.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is usually an economically favorable way to get your website online. With shared hosting, a web server is shared between several websites, which makes it possible to distribute resources equally between them. A well-established provider such as one.com has for many years been known for providing reliable webhosting services.

In the past, sharing a server could present challenges where a single website could risk taking all the resources and leaving the “neighboring websites” slower. But today they have servers where your website is located, with relatively high performance in most cases – so a website will never eat up all the server’s resources. Hosting companies today offer solutions that can effectively limit and balance consumption of resources to meet peak loads – so that all websites can run smoothly and harmoniously together. (#TeamSpirit)

VPS Hosting

VPS is short for Virtual Private Server, which works in such a way that websites running on VPS hosting share a physical server with other websites. If we just stick to the example from earlier about housing rent and caretakers.

So just try to imagine it a bit like living in a building with many apartments, but each tenant has their own space, so they don’t mix too much with each other, but still live at the same address. It is also worth noting that each VPS “tenant” is assigned their own partition with dedicated resources. On a VPS, there is often plenty of memory, storage space and processing power available, which of course reflects the price. The price of a VPS Hosting is generally more expensive than Shared Hosting.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is a type of webhosting service where a single server is assigned to a single customer. It differs from shared hosting, where several customers share the same resources on a common server. This server is dedicated solely to the customer’s website(s) and applications, which means that all server resources such as memory, storage, processing power and bandwidth are exclusively available to that website. The customer has full control over the server and can customize it according to needs and wishes, including most often, operating system and other software configurations.

If we stick to previous examples with housing types, then you can say that Shared Hosting/VPS are apartments, where dedicated hosting is then a house, i.e. your very own property. You get an entire server just for yourself, so you can be sure that no one else is stealing your resources or messing with your code. It’s like having a private island in cyberspace where you are the king and can rule with an iron fist (or a cotton glove if you prefer).

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is a form of webhosting where the resources to run a website or application are shared between several virtual servers that work together as a unified infrastructure. Unlike dedicated hosting, where a single physical server is reserved for a single customer, cloud hosting uses a network of virtual servers that are available across multiple physical locations.
With cloud hosting, you can think of it as having a flexible and scalable army of virtual servers working together to keep your online presence running smoothly. It’s like having a team effort where each server plays its part and contributes to the overall performance.

Today, cloud hosting has become a complex concept, and it is important to be aware when choosing a “cloud hosting” solution.

In the past, “cloud hosting” was used to describe a VPS configuration that could scale across multiple servers. If a web application experienced a sudden spike in traffic, the system could allocate extra resources and ensure smooth operation. The price and specifications of cloud hosting could vary significantly.

With cloud hosting, resources such as processing power, memory and storage space can be dynamically scaled according to customer needs in real-time. This means that if a traffic spike occurs, the hosting environment can automatically adapt and allocate extra resources to handle the load. Likewise, excess resources can be freed up when traffic drops, providing a more flexible and cost-effective solution. Cloud hosting also offers high availability and reliability as websites and applications are distributed across multiple servers. If one server fails, other servers take over, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous operation. An advantage of cloud hosting is the possibility to pay according to consumption. The customer only pays for the resources they actually use, which makes it financially flexible and scalable for companies compared to traditional hosting models. But at the same time, it also requires a lot of knowledge in server setup, or it can very quickly end up wrong!

Within Cloud Hosting, there is a wide range of different providers, but the kings within cloud hosting are undoubtedly Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud

So what should you choose?

It is a question on which there is no immediate concrete conclusion, because there are a large number of factors that come into play. But a good rule of thumb is that the vast majority of “brand new” websites/webshops can basically manage with either shared hosting or VPS to start with – and then you can always move your hosting when (hopefully) the number of visitors to your site has grown so much so that it requires more resources. The important thing to remember is that hosting is a “fluid” thing, and you can always move your website to a new web host – without major problems.

Domain names, on the other hand, are not so fluid – and are often a bit difficult to just change once you have built a website around it. We have therefore created a blog post “What is a domain?” where we go in depth with domain names