Hosting Packages Description

Hosting is a service that web hosts offer so that you can publish your website on the Internet.

How can people view your website?

When you make a web site and you would like other persons to observe it, you will need to copy (or upload) it to a web server. If you attempt to render the site available online by hosting it on your own personal computer, there is no way for you to keep it always up and running, which is why website hosting services appeared.

How does hosting work?

Web hosting firms provide you with hard disk storage space for your site on their powerful computers (web hosting servers) and ensure uninterrupted network uptime. When somebody writes your domain name (for instance www.my-best-domain.com) in their web browser's address bar, they will be connected to the web hosting server where they can explore the content of your web site.

Hosting varieties

With the advance of online technologies, several types of web hosting services have come into being to meet the various requirements of website possessors, among them shared website hosting services, VPS hosting services and dedicated server web hosting services.

Shared web hosting

Shared website hosting is the most widely used type of hosting, and is also the easiest to commence with. It is a service where one single server is divided between multiple web hosting account owners who are limited by the CPU, web traffic and content storage space quotas that they have been allocated. This type of website hosting is typically less expensive - you don't need to pay for the whole web server upfront, since it is divided between multiple customers, and the web hosting company can afford to provide much more modest prices. It is also easier to use - the web hosting server is pre-configured with all the necessary software and the hosting provider takes care of all server maintenance procedures and software updates for you.

The weak side of the shared website hosting solution is that you share the hosting server's system resources with other people and if a given site becomes very popular it may affect (and slow down) all the other web sites on that server, but most hosting companies, including us at RatRod Hosting, have security systems at work that obstruct that from taking place.

A definition of a website hosting service

Since shared web hosting is the most commonly used type of web hosting, the majority of hosting distributors and web hosting users simply refer to it as hosting or website hosting. As there is an immense rivalry on the website hosting marketplace, most hosting suppliers try to offer cheap prices and bonuses with their hosting services. We, for example, offer different website hosting packages and two invoicing options - monthly and yearly, based on your resources. If you choose the annual invoicing cycle, you will get a bonus - one free-of-charge domain name registration.

VPS packages

VPS is an acronym for Virtual Private Server. The VPS hosting solution is essentially the middle ground between the shared web hosting solution and the dedicated web hosting solution. If your website outgrows the resources offered by your shared website hosting package, a VPS server package is a good solution. VPS web hosting account holders still share the hardware resources of the physical server with other VPS web server hosting account holders, but the physical server is split up using special virtualization software so that each partition has its own dedicated system resources and can be configured practically like a real dedicated hosting server. The upside is that the CPU and the memory on a VPS web server are not shared. Moreover, the virtualization technology offers you much more autonomy to configure your server, but it also calls for a more advanced degree of technical knowledge.

Dedicated Package

With the Dedicated Package solution, the client obtains an entire server and can use all its system resources. The dedicated hosting solution is the most robust of all website hosting solutions and offers plenty of configuration possibilities - the clients can select the hardware and software specs that will answer their demands. Dedicated system resources and guaranteed performance are two reasons why a dedicated hosting server is an excellent solution for a busy corporate web site, for instance - you will not share the dedicated server's system resources with anyone else and will be bestowed with full root access. You will exercise complete control over the web server, which will enable you to make any server configuration changes that you might need. The downside of the dedicated web hosting solution is that a higher level of technical proficiency is required - unless you hire an IT professional, you will be responsible for managing and configuring the dedicated hosting server. The dedicated web server hosting solution also costs much more, since the cost of the dedicated hosting server isn't shared between any other users.

A website hosting advice for beginner users

If you are just beginning to build your site and are seeking a website hosting solution to commence with, the shared website hosting solution remains the most reasonable option. If your web site grows beyond your website hosting account's resources, you can usually upgrade. With us, for example, this is extremely easy and does not necessitate migration of your web site files, since only the parameters of your website hosting account change. You can also upgrade your web hosting plan to a more advanced one at any particular moment without having to worry about the remaining time before the expiration date. Additionally, if you finally reach the most powerful shared website hosting package and still require more resources (which is a good thing sometimes - it implies that your web site's popularity has risen!), there always is the possibility to migrate to a virtual server web hosting solution or a dedicated server hosting solution without having to change web hosting service providers.