Choosing a Website Hosting Plan

A common misconception is that when you buy a domain name, you get free web hosting to go along with it. Many people don't realize that if they want to run a website, they need to buy a web hosting plan along with a domain name. How would you go about choosing a web hosting plan? The answer, as with most things in life, is it depends based on your needs.
 

What is a web hosting company?

In simple terms, a web hosting company is one that provides hard drive space and bandwidth to people who want to build and publish a website.
 

What kinds of web hosting services are out there?

The many types of web hosting services can be broken down into two main categories:

 

• Shared Hosting. Your website is hosted on a server with other websites. Nearly all blogs, small businesses, and professional websites start on this level. Most websites do not require all of the resources of a full web server so it's a good idea to save money by going with a shared hosting plan. There are many different sub categories of shared hosting plans depending on how much disk space, bandwidth, and software customization you need.

 

• Dedicated Hosting. Your website is hosted on its own server. With a dedicated hosting plan, you can typically access the server as you would your own computer. You have more freedom in terms of customizing the server to your particular needs. Also, you'll get more allowance for disk space and bandwidth to your site. The downside of course is that its much more expensive than shared hosting and you may not use many of the features a dedicated hosting plan provides.
   

How do I determine what I need in a web hosting plan?

To figure this out, let's break down the main features you need to consider before buying a hosting plan:

 

1. Disk Space. Disk space is generally of greater concern if you are running a database driven site. An e-commerce site usually uses some kind of database to run. If you are running just a personal site with some text and few photos, you will most likely not need gigabytes of disk space.

 

2. Bandwidth. Bandwidth is typically offered at a monthly limit of data being transferred. Because html pages are so small, the majority of websites will not use more than 3gb of bandwidth a month. If you plan to host rich content like music or video, then you may need a bit more depending on the amount of traffic you get. Many web hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth. 99% of the time, this is not actually what's being given. If you read the fine print, they reserve the right to charge you more or cancel your account if you reach a certain limit so be wary of this.

 

3. E-mail Accounts. This is completely a personal choice and is not typically a problem since many web hosting companies offer unlimited e-mail accounts.

 

4. Software. The kinds of software available to you are important if you are running any kind of dynamic, database driven site. If you need to do any kind of server side scripting, you'll want to look for a web hosting service that supports php, perl, cgi, etc. Along with this you'll probably need database support with mysql being the most commonly used. Popular blogging platforms such as Wordpress require both php and mysql to run. If you have no idea what any of this means, then you probably don't need to worry about this.

 

5. Server Type. The two main types of servers are Linux based or Windows based. Linux hosting is generally cheaper since it is open source software. Windows hosting is required if you wish to run Active Server Pages (ASP) driven sites or if you need the Microsoft SQL database.

 

6. Support. If you are running a simple blog or something similar, you are not going to need 24 hour support.
 

Dynadot's web hosting

While Dynadot has discontinued it's own hosting plan, you can still create your website on your domain names through our website builder. Our website builder comes with free web hosting, allowing you to use our drag-and-drop builder to create a stylish, unique website without having to worry about setting up your website hosting configuration. You can learn more on our website builder page.