A web host is a server that stores your website, making it available 24/7. That’s it.
Yes, web hosts can do a lot more. They can store files, run applications of all kinds, and give you processing power. But they’re really just a computer that runs all day so people can access your site.
It’s like renting a plot of land so you can build on top of it. You’ll have to build your website up, but a company is giving you space to do it.
How Web Hosting Works With Everything Else
Web hosting is one part of what you need to build a website. But it’s not the only thing.
You’ll need each of these to get your website up and running:
- Domain: This is the URL that you own and want to use for your website. It’s your address on the internet. They have real value and can be bought, sold, and traded. If no one else has taken the domain you want, you can usually get it for about $10/year.
- Domain registrar: “registrar” is a fancy name for the company that holds your domain for you. You “register” your domain with them. Most web hosts will also do this for you but your domain registrar can be a completely separate company. With your domain registrar, you point your domain wherever you want. That’s how people find your site. They enter in the URL of your domain, then your domain registrar says “go over there.” And that’s how they find your website on your web host.
- Website: Your web host and your website are different things. Web hosts don’t give you a web site, they just give you a space to place your website. You still have to build your website. You could do it all by hand and write the HTML yourself. More likely, you’ll use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress to help you build it.
- Web host: the company that’s responsible for storing your website and making sure people can access it at all times.
This is your website stack, you need all the pieces in order to make a website available.
Are web hosts worth it?
Yes, they’re worth it.
Web hosts have become a commodity these days. There’s tons of great web hosting companies, they’re all pretty similar, and they compete mainly on price.
Even so, web hosts do a ton of valuable stuff for you:
- Give you a UI to manage your site. You don’t have to know how to code or use a command line. Log in like any other app and then configure things how you want.
- Customer support. We all get stuck when learning this stuff. Having someone you can email can be a huge lifesafer.
- Keeping the technical stuff updated. Software and hardware is constantly changing. The last thing any of us want to deal with is updating the PHP version that our server is using. Good web hosts take care of this for you.
- Helping with security. Sites do get hacked all the time, I’ve been through this myself. It sucks. Having a web host manage the basic security stuff like keeping all the tech updated goes a long way.
- Managing traffic loads automatically. Traffic does spike occasionally. Yes, there are limits that will break most web hosts but it’s super nice not having to worry about 99.999% of traffic fluctuations.
- Flexibility to build however you want. Add any CMS you want, ecommerce software, or build it all yourself. I’ve always loved the freedom to get things working just how I like it.
Some web hosts are better at these items than others. But overall, you get a ton of value when using them. I’m extremely thankful that I don’t have to do any of this myself. Especially when you can get solid web hosting for as little as $5/month.
Is it possible to move your website to another web host?
Yes!
It’s actually really easy these days, most web hosts have free migration tools that will move your website for you.
A while back, I decided to switch web hosts for my personal site: larslofgren.com. It had been on MediaTemple for over a decade which was an old, premium web host. They were bought by GoDaddy a few years ago. Well they decided to force migrate everybody into GoDaddy and messed up a bunch of stuff in the transfer. PHP versions were going out of date and they were forcing me to deal with a bunch of other random stuff. I got annoyed. I had been wanting to switch anyway, this was the final straw that pushed me over the edge.
So I went to Hostinger, used their migration tool, and had my whole site moved over within a few hours. Maybe one hour of actual work from me. I was shocked at how easy this stuff has gotten. They logged into my old WordPress site, grabbed everything, then automatically mirrored it. I watched a few YouTube videos while I waited for it to finish.
A lot of web hosts have migration tools like this. It’s now really easy to switch if you want to.
Which web host should I get?
We’ve spent years researching the best web host, we’ve rewritten and researched all the main web hosting companies dozens of times. You’ll find our current best web hosting recommendations here.
Does the type of web hosting matter?
There are a bunch of different types of web hosting:
- Shared web hosting: your website sits on the same server as other websites. This is the cheapest option and how most websites are hosted.
- WordPress hosting: the web host specializes in hosting WordPress websites to make them faster and more secure.
- Virtual private server (VPS) web hosting: your website is on the same server as other websites but there’s a virtual (software) separation so they can’t steal resources from each other.
- Cloud web hosting: your website is in a virtual environment that spans multiple servers. This makes scaling large websites a lot easier since your website can easily get more resources if needed.
- Dedicating web hosting: you get your own web server, your website is separated from other websites by actual hardware.
I strongly recommend you ignore all this. If you’re building a new site, get a cheap shared web hosting plan. All of the major web hosts will give you shared web hosting in their base package. Plans usually start at about $5/month. This is more than enough hosting for the vast majority of people.
What’s shared hosting? It just means your website is on the same server as a bunch of other websites. It also means it costs less than other types of hosting since you’re sharing resources.. Theoretically, if one of those other websites has a problem, that could impact your website too. But that almost never happens these days. Hosting has gotten more than good enough to handle traffic spikes.
All the other types of web hosting are for established companies with websites that get a ton of traffic. By the time you need to worry about switching to another type of hosting, you’ll have a full-time person working for you that will know all the differences.
How is web hosting different from domain hosting?
“Domain hosting” is another term for “domain registrar.” It’s the company that stores your domain.
Every web host will register your domain for you if you want. Or you can use a specialized domain registrar like Namecheap.
To make things more confusing, most domain registrars (or domain hosts), also have a web hosting service. They started out as a domain registrar and then added web hosting as a product in order to keep growing their revenue. So there’s lots of overlap between web hosts and domain registrars.
In general:
- Companies that started as domain registrars have lower quality hosting. Website speeds tend to be lower and the hosting price tends to be higher. You’ll pay more for a worse service.
- Web hosts charge you more for your domain registration. I just looked and Namecheap (a popular domain registrar) charges $9.58/year for a new .com domain, $5.98 with a promo code. But Bluehost (a popular web host) charges $12.99/year for the exact same .com domain. Web hosts realize that lots of folks want to register their domain and host their site at the same place so they charge you a few extra bucks.
I prefer to register my domains with a company that focuses on domain registration. And I prefer to host my websites at a company that specializes in web hosting.
What if I had to choose one or the other?
If you REALLY want to only work with one company, get a good web host and then register your domain with them. Domain registration is a commodity service, it’s not that special unless you need to manage hundreds of domains. But there’s a huge difference between a bad web host and a good one. So get a good web host and pay a little extra.
What about web hosting and website builders? How are they different?
Web hosting is one piece of what you need to build a website. You also need a domain, your domain registrar, and the website itself.
Website builders combine all that stuff into a single service. You go to one of the popular website builders, pick a domain, they register the domain for you, build your website using their software, and they handle the web hosting.
Website builders are perfect if you’re building a website for the first time. Everything is in one place and you can get a basic website live in less than an hour.
That said, there’s serious limitations with website builders. If you’re planning on building a bigger website, I recommend getting a web host and building your website with WordPress. And if you want an ecommerce site, make sure to use a dedicated ecommerce website builder.