How to purchase hosting

When a hosting provider allocates space on a web server for a website to store its files, they are hosting a website. Web hosting makes the files that comprise a website (code, images, etc.) available for viewing online. Every website you’ve ever visited is hosted on a server.

Here is a simple diagram of how hosting works.

Step 1. Find a hosting provider

We always recommend finding the same hosting service as your domain registrar.

This is because most registrars offer a feature to easily connect their domain to their hosting if they are purchased within the same company.

If you purchase your hosting somewhere else, you may need extra steps to get it connected.

Step 2. Choose a hosting plan

Basic Hosting plans are easily differentiated into

• Shared Hosting
• Dedicated Hosting

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting means that there are many websites hosted on a single server. These plans usually state "unlimited/unmetered" bandwidth but this is often misleading because every server has a limited total bandwidth available shared within all the websites hosted on it.

What is unlimited here is that you can actually consume more bandwidth if you have more traffic, however this is also the same for other websites, this means that any one website on the server could be unfairly generating more traffic affecting the speed of your website.

Once the total bandwidth for the server is reached, the server stops responding to requests and nobody can enter your site.

The other cons of shared hosting is you never know how many websites are hosted on the server. You can enjoy fast speeds on a new server but as more websites are placed in the same server, it gradually gets slower to the point where every website will take an excruciatingly long time to load.

There is no fix for this problem and you will have to ask the hosting company to shift your website to another server for a small fee and the problem repeats itself again eventually.

That's why shared hosting plans are so cheap.

This is applicable for people who are starting hobby sites that don't have much traffic or need for reliability.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting plans actually tell you how much the bandwidth limit is for your website. This means that if your website or any other website hits this limit, it doesn't affect other website on the server, every website is partitioned to use it's own resources.

This ensures reliability and consistent loading speed which is VERY important for websites that generate leads or sales, every extra second it takes to load will heavily impact your bottomline sale figure.

Dedicated hosting of course, is slightly more expensive but it is surely worth it if you are serious about your website.

However if cost is an issue, you can always start with shared hosting but transition to dedicated hosting when the need arises.

Step 3. Purchase your hosting plan

Similarly to domain registration, a longer hosting plan gives you a big discount.

Step 4. Connect your domain to your hosting plan

If you have followed our advice to purchase domain and hosting from the same provider, Godaddy, you can easily follow this guide to connect your domain to your hosting.