Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on web server, online users can then browse your website on Internet. Company that provides web servers to host your website is called web hosting providers.

A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. For example, ‘Best Web Host of Year 2003’ award winner, iPowerWeb, is a web hosting company that hosts more than 200,000 websites. For that reason, a web hosting company need many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to ‘store’ website. And all these web servers are connected to Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a physical building called ‘data center’. In order to guarantee all web servers are safe, secure and fully operational all time, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.

What are different types of web hosting? There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts can be organized into following categories:

a. Shared Hosting

In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting), many websites are sharing space on same physical web servers. Depending on web host, a physical web server can hosts a few hundred to even thousand of different websites at one time. You may wonder if a physical web server is shared by so many websites, will performance of web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers are usually equipped with high-end powerful computer, therefore it can support up to a certain number of websites without any problem. But when web server is overloaded and exceeded reasonable number of websites that it can support, then you will begin to experience a slower response from web server.

However, a reputable and experience web hosting provider will constantly monitor performance of web server and will add new web servers when deem necessary without sacrificing benefits of website owners. Since a physical web server is shared (diskspace, computer processing power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites, web hosting provider can therefore afford to offer a lower hosting price. For same reason, websites on shared hosting would have to accept slower server response time. Typically, shared hosting plans start at $5 - $20 per month.

b. Dedicated Hosting

In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hosting assigned a specific web server to be used only by one customer. Since a dedicated web server is allocated to only a single customer, customer has option to host single/multiple web sites, modify software configuration, handle greater site traffic and scale bandwidth as necessary. Therefore, dedicated hosting commands a higher premium and typically starts at $50 per month and can range up to $200 - $500 per month. As a result, dedicated hosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely important website.

c. Co-location hosting

1.The reputation of web hosting company. Most web hosting companies on web have been in existence for at least 2 years and they are usually handled by experience and IT savvy network engineers who can provide necessary support and services to their customers. However, there are also several “mom and pop” set ups out there which are handled by amateurs who are greedy to make plenty of your own money without even knowing how to do something as fundamental as setting up your user account. Be sure to check credentials of web hosting firm by either reading their about us or technology they use for their server farm. Make sure you pick a company that has been around for at very least 2 years and have a successful track record with 95% up time for all its servers. That’s a reasonable expectation as 100% is not a realistic aim in computing world.

2.How much of storage space are you given? Most web companies out offer space that range from as small as 20 MB to as big as 2GB or even more. However, this depends largely upon you user. Make sure you do not get sold into buying more space then you need. This is a common trend amongst novice web owners who tend to feel that bigger space better and more powerful their website can be. That is most contorted statement I have ever heard in my 5 years as a IT expert and internet marketing consultant. Personally, I would recommend you to use Host4profit as your hosting company because I find that they provide most innovative packages that even reward you by paying you to be a member & in many other ways too one of which includes a trip to Bahamas. Find out more at http://www.host4profit.com/632628