Business owners we talk to often ask about this, and so for anyone unfamiliar with what exactly web hosting is and how it works with your website, this post is to demystify that.
An analogy I’ve used before is that you can think of your web domain (your-biz.com) as your phone number, and your web hosting as your phone. When someone dials your number, phone carriers know how to route that call to your specific phone. In a similar way, when someone visits your domain, DNS services route that internet traffic to where your website files are stored.
This is how your web browser is then able to display the website.
The web hosting is essentially a computer (called a server) that stores the files and databases needed for your website to work, and loads those files for anyone visiting your website.
When you hear about someone’s website being hacked, it’s the host computer that was affected.
How Web Hosts Differ From One Another
Like with anything in life, the robustness of one web host varies quite a bit from another. The biggest differences you’ll usually see are things like:
- Speed: How quickly that host can accept incoming traffic and serve all the needed information to their browser to load the website. Ever gone to a website that took forever to load? Maybe you even got impatient and left. That was because of slow hosting.
- Uptime: In any given day, what percentage of that time was the website accessible and working correctly? We’ve all seen “gateway errors” and other server error messages at one point when trying to visit a website. Unreliable web hosting could mean your site is down when valuable prospects were trying to visit, and becomes more problematic the longer the site stays down.
- Security: Does the hosting offer encrypted options that make it harder for bad actors to access private information or meddle with things they shouldn’t? How good is the server at rejecting bots, scripts, and other nefarious tools hackers use to gain access? Cheaper hosting tends to offer very little of this.
- Failsafes & Backups: When all else fails, being able to load a backup of the site from the last time it was working correctly can solve a lot of issues. But that’s only possible IF there are backups being created at regular intervals. Cheaper hosting rarely offers these features, either. Having backups to call upon can mean the difference between a fairly painless restoration of a broken or hacked website and being stuck with embarrassing scenarios.
Shared Hosting on Large Hosts: Large hosting providers offer what they call shared hosting plans, where hundreds or even thousands of websites share the same server resources. This can lead to slower page load times, especially during high-traffic periods, because all sites must compete for the same CPU, RAM, and bandwidth. The performance of your website can be affected if other sites on the same server experience traffic spikes or use excessive resources.
(Shared hosting is cheaper because it’s like buying in bulk.)
Private Hosting (or Dedicated/VPS Hosting): In contrast, private hosting typically refers to dedicated servers or Virtual Private Servers (VPS), where fewer websites share a server. In the case of dedicated hosting, your site is the only one on the server. This setup allows for more consistent and faster load times because your site has more access to the server’s resources. With fewer or no other websites competing for resources, your site can operate more efficiently and reliably.
(Private hosting may cost more, and you get what you pay for.)
Examples of security breaches and hacks for business sites:
Sometimes big hosting companies like GoDaddy become a target because of how many websites they host. Hackers can employ tactics like “denial of service” attacks, which in a nutshell means spamming a server with a massive amount of junk traffic to overwhelm it and make loading websites impossible.
Hackers may do this in a general way to agitate the hosting company itself, or they may be targeting a specific website and trying to take it offline.
Other times, hackers manage to gain access to a website and make changes to it without the business owner’s knowledge. That might mean inserting ads that leverage the website’s traffic to make the hacker money, changing text or key information, stealing private information, or creating embarrassing scenarios like placing adult images on the front page of a professional website.
Without good monitoring, a website might remain in this state for weeks, and who knows how many legitimate visitors saw it in such a state during that time.
Advantages of Web Professionals With Hosting Plans
There is little stopping a business owner from going directly to a website hosting provider and purchasing their own hosting. However, there are technical aspects of setup and maintenance one needs to know, and not all hosting providers have support teams to help.
Even if they do, often that help is reactive rather than proactive, meaning you can call them AFTER something is an issue, but they aren’t monitoring the site all the time preventatively.
Web marketing agencies may partner with hosting specialists who do monitor website health ongoingly. Those specialists will also provide peace of mind such as:
- Ongoing updates and maintenance
- Security monitoring and quick reaction times for attacks
- Optimizations to the hosting settings and website settings to improve speed and uptime
- Oversee website backups and personally address fixes when needed
If you’re interested in this type of assistance, ask your web designer about it next time you’re having work done on your website. If you’re having your website redesigned, for instance, this can be an advantageous time to make a switch.
Ready to take your website’s performance and security to the next level? Why not explore our hosting plan tailored specifically for businesses like yours?