In a nutshell, web hosting is renting space on a server so your website has somewhere to live.
In much the same way as you have a hard drive in your computer to save things to, your website needs to be saved somewhere. So there are these fancy setups called data centres that are connected to the internet, with backup connections, emergency power and such to make sure your website stays online.
You might have seen buildings and rooms like this in movies.
Someone has to pay for all this infrastructure, data transfer and electricity, hence the charge for web hosting.
The risks of cheap hosting
Web hosting can be found really cheap or really expensive. So what’s the difference?
For companies to offer cheap web hosting they’re cutting corners somewhere, like:
- using a data centre overseas in places where this is available on the cheap (you can get pretty cheap web hosting in Russia if that’s your thing)
- providing poor levels of support if something goes wrong
- cramming as many websites on the one server as possible, which means slow download times and/or unreliable uptimes
Just remember, you get what you pay for. Someone has cut their costs right back to offer cheap hosting. If that’s your choice, that’s fine. Just make that choice with your eyes open.
Different levels of support
We offer a few different website hosting options with different levels of support. So our web hosting is generally more than just “rent” and will include other services such as:
- various backup options
- software updates (like the way you need to update the software on your phone or PC)
- additional security options
Not to mention we only use reputable data centres/hosting providers in the first place.