Every website you visit is hosted on a server. It is a hosting service that allows anyone to make their website visible and accessible on the internet. Space on server and internet connectivity are provided on rent or lease for use by clients.

There are many types of web hosting:

Shared Web Hosting: This is the most basic web hosting plan and meant for those who are just starting out and don’t have much traffic on their site. More than one websites are placed on the same server and share limited resources like CPU, bandwidth, etc. If one website exceeds its usage, the other clients will suffer as they will be encroaching on other’s space and resources. 

VPS Web Hosting: In a Virtual Private Server, resources are divided between clients through the process of virtualization. This prevents the encroachment of resources that we mentioned in Shared hosting. The web hosting companies create hosting plans and the resources are provided to the clients based on the requirements of their websites. 

Dedicated Web Hosting: The server is leased out or rented to the clients and they have major control over the server. Managed web hosting also comes under this. In managed hosting, the hosting providers have major control, and to make any change on your website, you have to contact them.

If you are self-managing the server, you get complete rights of the server and can set it up as per your personalized requirements especially if you need more privacy and security on your server. It is best for organizations or those who are tech-savvy and get a huge amount of traffic on their website.  

There are various other sub-categories of web hosting like:

• Cloud Web Hosting
• Colocation Web Hosting
• Reseller Web Hosting
• Clustered Web Hosting 
• Grid Web Hosting

Analyze the needs of your website first like whether it’s an eCommerce site or a blog; whether you will get high traffic or if you are just starting out and might get limited traffic; who your audience is. 

If you are starting a blog and are just a beginner, shared hosting will be better for you.

If you have been in the field for some time now and are getting more traffic than before, you can go for VPS hosting.

If you run an organization or deal with user privacy, dedicated hosting will be the best option for you.

If you are running a site that requires a user to enter personal credentials like name, contact information, etc; or an eCommerce site that requires the users to enter their payment details, then VPS or dedicated hosting should be your preferred choice.

You must also consider the following factors before purchasing a hosting plan:

Services and Features like storage, bandwidth, and, etc.

SSL certificates- if you have to purchase them or if the hosting providers offer them for free.

Support- Whether you are a novice or an expert, you will require support at one point or another, so choose a hosting provider that offers great customer support.

Storing space in hosting is like making a file cabinet on a server to store files and folders related to your website. The storing space you require depends on how big your website is and how many files(website scripts, email, HTML files, images, etc.) you need to store. 

Bandwidth is the amount of data shared within a specific amount of time on the internet. As a website owner, you need to understand and analyze the amount of data transfer that takes place between your website and the end-users. It also depends on the kind of website you own and that when a user views your website, their computer downloads the file for them to view it. Higher bandwidth allows the users to download large and heavy files quickly and view the webpage faster.