Hosting - What it is and Why its Important

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Here at Sleeky, we offer hosting and support to all our clients! But what exactly is hosting, why is it important and what features make a good hosting service? Let’s find out.

First of all, you can check our Hosting Service here for some statistics, or if you want to get straight into the action. Once a website is made, all its content including; HTML, images, text etc. needs to be stored somewhere so it can be regularly accessed by users on the internet. This is where a web hosting service comes in, storing your content in a reliable digital repository, separate to your website, makes life much easier in terms of storage limits on local devices, costs and website performance.

Here’s a rundown of some benefits of Web Hosting:

Website performance/ Speed

Hosting services will have a dedicated, optimised server to ensure your website will run as fast and as efficiently as possible. Content, and your webpages in general, will load as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

Technical Support

Especially if you’re new to web hosting, or internet services in general, technical support from someone who is an expert in the matter can be crucial to the success and stability of your website.

Security

Most hosting services will have added security options, since they are responsible for storing all your content, you want to know it is safe right? You can check the details of ours here.

Cost

Hosting is obviously an ongoing cost, so it is important to find a reliable, reasonably priced service with varied plans so you’re not too constricted in your growth (Just like ours). Generally, paying for web hosting will be the cheaper option to doing it yourself unless they’re ripping you off!

Some features to look for

Some services may offer different things, so its important to know what to look for to know you’re getting a good deal, here are a few things worth paying the extra for:

Bigger storage space – fairly self-explanatory, the more storage space you have the more website content and functionality you can implement.
Email service – Work emails can be important and some hosting packages include an email add-on to keep you all connected out-of-office.
Backups – In case of file corruption, or accidental deletion, it is important to back up files regularly, this will usually be included but it is important to check for sure.
Analytics – Your hosting service will see all of your traffic, what works and what doesn’t so it can be interesting to see if they include this as a report in their service.

Hosting is a must, but which kind?

As we have said, anyone trying to make or update a website should certainly be considering their hosting service from the get go. If you start looking at hosting, you may see that there are 3 common types:

Shared Hosting – A single server that hosts multiple websites, perfect for a small starter website but may need upgrading to allow room for growth. It’s low maintenance and cost-effective but can vary in web-stability and security.

VPS Hosting – Virtual Private Server, or VPS, is a server that still hosts multiple websites, but gives them dedicated resources like their own Operating System (OS) and installable plug-ins. Allows admin access, good scalability and generally secure but is more expensive and requires some technical knowledge.

Cloud Hosting – Utilises multiple online servers to offer capability and speed miles ahead of the other options, personalised experience and easy management. Regular backups, safe from server crashes and highly scalable but high cost and varying prices dependant on offered packages.

The Wrap Up

Hosting is crucial in web development and requires much more thought than a lot of people think, its pointless having a lovely website that is unstable, insecure and won’t load. You can check out the details of SSL Certificates and Future-Proofing your site with hosting on our blogging page!

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