You’ve probably heard people talk about web hosting, but what exactly is it? Have you ever wondered exactly how people access your beautiful website? A website is simply a collection of files stored on a computer somewhere on the internet. If you’ve seen my discussion of servers, you’ll know that the computer that contains a website’s files is called a web server. The service of providing space on a web server is known as “hosting”.

Hosting plans are varied and are commonly paid on a monthly basis. In most plans, you’ll share a web server with several other websites, reducing your costs to as little as $7.95/month. If you have a large website that requires a whole lot of space on the web server’s hard drive, and a lot of people access it every day, you may require your own dedicated server. Dedicated servers are much more expensive.

Shared hosting has some pitfalls, however. Since you are sharing the server with other websites, you can occassionally be penalized for their bad behavior. For instance, if someone is sending spam emails from that server, all of the email addresses from that server may be blocked. So, your email may never reach it’s intended recipients, even if no one from your company ever sent a single spam email.

Despite a few downfalls, however, shared hosting is typically a good fit for small businesses that can’t afford the monthly expense of a dedicated server.