When you need your, your organization, or your company’s visibility online, you definitely need a domain and hosting. You can register a domain from anyone, but you need a choose the correct hosting plan from a ton of hosting plans. VPS hosting or cloud hosting or dedicated hosting or shared hosting? The question may still remain, how much RAM, CPU, Disk Space, and Bandwidth do I need? What do I need besides those? This article will clear your concept about this.
If you know much about domain and hosting, you can skip this paragraph. For online visibility, your website needs a unique address. This address is called a domain. There is only one domain present at a time. Whoever will search your domain name will find only your website. And you designed your website for your website visitors and made your website actionable. Actionable means visitors can contact you through “contact form” or can order anything by pressing the “Order” button or can call you by pressing the “Call” button. If anyone searches your website’s domain name in any browser, the browser sends the request to the server, files like HTML, CSS, and Script, etc., which are stored in the server, delivered to the web browser. That server is called the hosting server.
You must know about different types of hosting. And also, it’s different features like Disk Space, CPU, RAM, Bandwidth, Uptime and SSL, etc. Unless cheap priced hosting provider can fool you.
Understanding of different types of hosting Plans
Cloud Hosting: In cloud hosting, your website is not stored in a single server, unlike a shared/dedicated hosting plan. Instead, spread your website contents in multiple interconnected servers and located across a wide geographical area. Those servers only exist in a virtual environment. That is why that server is called cloud.
Sometimes it is also called on-demand hosting, cloud server hosting, or cluster server hosting. In cloud hosting, every server has an up-to-date copy of your website. If a server hardware failure or one of the servers is too busy, your website can immediately be switched to another server. As a result, cloud hosting has no downtime.
Dedicated Hosting: In dedicated hosting, a physical server is dedicated to a single client for his website/s. A client has full access to this server, and he can customize, including OS, hardware, etc., that server according to his/her demand.
Dedicated hosting is more expensive. The price depends on the amount of bandwidth, amount of Disc space, and amount of RAM, amongst other things. Dedicated hosting can handle many visitors. As the client can customize the server, so the client gets more security and high performance.
VPS Hosting: Rather than definition, if I will give you an example, it will be more comprehensive to you. Suppose I have a computer that has 8GB RAM, 20GB SSD disk, octa-core(8 cores) processor. I used a virtual box(VMware) and made 4 virtual machines, each having 2GB RAM, 5GB SSD disk, and dual-core(2 cores) processor. Each virtual machine is independent. You can configure those as your wish/ any operating system according to your demand.
VPS means Virtual Private Server. Now, you are clear from the above example. You will get a virtual server, not a dedicated server, in VPS hosting plan. But only you will use that server. Not dedicated physical server but dedicated virtual server.
Shared Hosting: In shared hosting, a single physical server hosts multiple websites. Every client can use a section of the server, which they pay for. Every client sharing a server can get a percentage of storage, RAM, Bandwidth, CPU, mail server, and many other features.
Shared hosting is usually the cheapest. As many clients share the same server, so server maintenance cost is shared. But cheap cost comes with problems. Security is an issue here as many websites are using the same server. No one knows what is going on the other website. And sometimes, the server can be less uptime.
Now try to clear your concept of different features of the hosting plan.
Understanding the different features of a hosting plan
It is very necessary to understand the different features of a hosting plan. Here, I will clear your conception of the different features of a hosting plan in easy language. Let’s start…
Understanding of Disk Space of hosting plan
Disk space is the amount of space is allocated from your server to store website data for your website. Website data means text, pictures, videos, code, and database. You can easily calculate how much disk you need by this formula:
Disk Space= Average no of page size * Total no of page
A plenty amount of disk space is not needed for your website. On average, a WordPress site requires 1GB disk space maximum. For a blog site or small business, you require a maximum of 1GB space & For an eCommerce site; you need 2-3 GB space maximum. So decide wisely. Do not cost much money for more than enough disk space.
Understanding of Bandwidth of hosting plan
Bandwidth is the amount of data that your hosting server will allow to transfer from your website to website visitors for a given amount of time. It usually is calculated monthly. You can easily calculate bandwidth by this formula:
Monthly Website VisitorsAverage Monthly Page-ViewAverage Webpage Size
While buying a hosting package, someone may fool you by writing “Unlimited Bandwidth.” There is no such thing. By unlimited bandwidth, they mean that bandwidth is unlimited for an average user since they cannot even reach the limit.
Understanding of CPU of hosting plan
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit, and its mechanism is like your own computer. Your hosted website is on a server that has a CPU. CPU is the brain of your server. CPU is made of several cores. More amount of cores means higher performance capacity of the server. The limitation of the core is one task is processed at a time. Rest requests are in the queue. After one is executed, then the next one is handled. Time is needed to do one task. So a high amount of cores means less time for one request. If multiple requests are sent to the server at once, and if the CPU cores amount is low, then it can affect your website performance.
Understanding of RAM of hosting plan
RAM is a form of storage. While running an application, all application data is temporarily stored in this memory. After closing this application, the storage becomes empty. On your website, a lot of things need to process simultaneously—the more process at the same time, the more RAM you need.
For a small website, a few processes simultaneously, but for a larger website, a lot of processes are at the same time. So you can decide easily whether you need more RAM or not. If your RAM is not enough to process, the server returns the “500 Internal Server Error” HTTP status code.
Understanding of SSL of hosting plan
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. If a website has SSL, a secure layer is created between the website and the user & data transfers the website, and the user is encrypted. So any outsider can not see what data is transferring.
It is essential to build trust in your users in an online business to feel safe on your website while transferring money or any other pieces of sensitive information. SSL supports the following security principles:
• Encryption: It ensures data secure data transmission between the website to the user.
• Authentication: It assures you that you are connecting with the right server.
• Data Integrity: It ensures that data is actually delivered, which you are requested or submitted.
More important is that SSL is one of the ranking signals.
Understanding of Uptime of hosting plan
Uptime is the most important thing to measure your web hosting service quality. Uptime means that how much time your hosting server stays up and running. It is expressed by percentages like 99.9% or 99.95%. When your web hosting is down, it can serve your webpage to your website visitors as well as search engines in the general sense. It sounds good when you see your web hosting company’s uptime is 99%, But just calculate, your website gets down 3 days and 6 hours yearly.
Simple Calculation, 99% uptime = 14.4 minutes/day or 1.7 hours/week or 7.2 hours/month or 3.65 days/year down.
Your priority is to keep your website available 24/7 for your website visitors and search engines. So, check server uptime carefully, also read your hosting company’s terms and conditions about uptime. Unless it can damage your website ranking, cheap price hosting companies’ uptime guarantee can be misleading too.
Finally, after reading the full article, you are now clear about the different hosting plans. According to your demand, choose any or do some internet searches, you will get your desired plan. Don’t just go for a cheap price; consider your demand.
For any queries, feel free to contact me.
