Hosting Packages Explanation

Hosting is a service that web hosting distributors provide so that you can put your web site on the World Wide Web.

How can people open your site?

When you make a website and you would like other persons to see it, you will need to publish (or upload) it to a web server. If you try to render the website discoverable on the World Wide Web by hosting it on your own computer, there is no way for you to keep it up and running all the time, which is why web hosting services appeared.

How does hosting work?

Hosting firms offer you data storage space for your website on their powerful computers (web hosting servers) and ensure constant network connectivity. When somebody writes your URL (for example www.my-best-domain.com) in their browser's URL bar, they will be connected to the web hosting server where they can take a peek at the content of your web site.

Hosting types

With the progress of web technologies, several types of web hosting services have emerged to match the various requirements of web site owners, among them shared hosting services, VPS hosting services and dedicated web hosting services.

Shared hosting

Shared web hosting is the most popular type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where one single web hosting server is divided between multiple users who are limited by the CPU, bandwidth and web hosting server hard disk space quotas that they have been assigned. This type of website hosting is usually cheaper - you don't have to pay for the whole web hosting server in advance, since it is divided between a lot of users, and the web hosting services provider can afford to provide much more moderate prices. It is also easier to use - the hosting server is pre-configured with all the required software and the hosting vendor takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.

The setback of the shared web hosting solution is that you share the web hosting server's resources with other hosting account holders and if a given site becomes really popular it may influence (and slow down) the rest of the websites on that server, but the majority of web hosting firms, including us at Fast PHP Hosting, have protection systems in place that obstruct that from happening.

A description of a website hosting service

Because shared website hosting is the most popular form of web hosting, the majority of hosting providers and web hosting users simply call it web hosting or website hosting. As there is a big rivalry on the web hosting market, the majority of hosting service providers strive to offer affordable prices and bonuses with their services. We, for example, provide different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, depending on your funds. If you choose the yearly invoicing cycle, you will receive a gift - one free domain registration.

VPS packages

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is basically the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your website outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting account, a virtual hosting server is a good choice. private virtual server hosting users still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other private virtual server web hosting account owners, but the disk drive is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured practically like a real dedicated web hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a private virtual server are not shared. Moreover, the virtualization software gives you much more autonomy to configure your VPS web hosting server, but it also presupposes a more advanced level of technical know-how.

Dedicated Package

With the Dedicated Package solution, the customer gets a whole physical machine and can utilize all its system resources. The dedicated web hosting solution is the most flexible of all hosting solutions and offers many configuration possibilities - the dedicated server web hosting customers can select the hardware and software specifications that will match their needs. Dedicated resources and no-holds-barred performance are two reasons why a dedicated server web hosting plan is a perfect option for a high resource-absorbing business portal, for example - you will not share the hosting server's system resources with anyone else and will acquire complete root access. You will have full authority over the web server, which will enable you to make any server configuration modifications that you might require. The weakness of the dedicated hosting solution is that a more advanced level of technical proficiency is required - unless you engage an Information Technology professional, it will be your duty to manage and configure the dedicated server. The dedicated hosting solution is also much more expensive, since the cost of the physical machine isn't shared between any other users.

A web hosting recommendation for beginner users

If you are just starting to create your website and are seeking a hosting solution to begin with, the shared website hosting solution remains the best choice. If your web site grows beyond your shared hosting account's resources, you can normally upgrade. With us, for instance, this is very easy and does not involve migration of your web site files, since only the features of your account change. You can also upgrade your website hosting package to a more powerful one at any particular moment without worrying about the time left before expiration. Besides, if you eventually reach the most powerful shared hosting plan and still require more resources (which is great sometimes - it means that your web site's popularity has expanded!), there always is the option to move to a virtual private hosting server or a dedicated server web hosting solution without the need to change web hosting providers.