Hosting: what it is for and how to choose the right one

The hosting opens up a multitude of opportunities, both leisure and work. With it you can have a space on a server to host a web page that everyone can access, either to have your business site, your courses, promotions, your online store, your personal blog from which to spread, create your own cloud storage, gallery, and a long etc.

Currently, with all the transformation that the world is undergoing due to new technologies, and the acceleration caused by the pandemic, digitize your business And starting from the Internet can mean the difference between a ruinous business or success. Therefore, you should take into account the possibility of having your website to reach beyond local users or customers.

For buy a hosting you have a multitude of options available on the net. There are a huge number of providers of these types of services. In addition, the vast majority of providers offer extra services in addition to hosting for quite competitive prices, such as domain registrations, email, etc.

There are a multitude of well-known services that you should opt for over other less well-known ones that may have outrageously attractive prices, and even free in some cases, but they lack security, do not provide any support or guarantee, and the servers have a disastrous speed and availability, so your website will almost always be down or will go very slow, something that will make you flee in terror to your visitors.

A good example is Raiolanetworks.es, a Spanish company with servers in European territory, something especially important if you want to make sure that they comply with the data protection laws of Europe.

There are currently several types of hosting in the market, each with its advantages and disadvantages, and with varied prices. Therefore, it is important to know each type to know which is the one that interests you the most depending on the objective you are looking for or your needs. Among the most important are:

• Shared or shared: doing a simile is like when you live in a shared apartment, so you will share resources and space with others. In the case of hosting, it is the same, all users who use this service will be hosted on the same server, which is not ideal in order to get the best features and manage the site as you please, but which is the cheapest option . It may be enough for those looking to host a small blog or a website with little traffic, since beyond that they might notice a lack of space or speed.
• Elastic or elastic: it is becoming more and more popular, and has the particularity of being able to scale according to your needs, without limits. For example, you could start with a small website with little traffic, and as your business prospers or your website attracts more views, you can improve the resources you have at your fingertips by expanding your payment. In addition, you should know that the expansion is automatic, so when you exceed the current limit, the new higher capacity plan will be activated.
• Dedicated: It is the opposite of the shared one, like when you rent or buy a flat just for yourself. In this type of server you will have all the hardware and resources for you, without sharing them with others. On the other hand, this will imply a higher cost, but it will give you maximum performance and flexibility for its management. That is why it can be a great alternative for the websites of large companies or professionals. Of course, you will need knowledge for its management, or the hiring of experts for it ...
• VPS (Virtual Private Server): A virtual private server, as its name suggests, is a virtual partition of the physical server. That is, the server will be divided into several virtual machines with their own particular resources (network, CPU, RAM, storage) that function as an independent server. That is, you could have a fairly adjusted price and a service that would be in between shared and dedicated. As another positive point, in some cases it offers maintenance service, so you will not have to take care of the installation and configuration of the operating system, software, security, maintenance, etc.
• Cloud or cloud hosting: It is similar in some ways to traditional hosting or hosting, but will use multiple servers simultaneously. This will allow better performance, balancing the load, and allowing that if one server fails, the other / s would continue to provide support and the site or service would not collapse. The disadvantage in this case is that for individuals, freelancers, or a SME, it is an expensive service.

Some people they confuse hosting with domain. But it is not the same, despite the fact that many hosting services offer both possibilities without having to go to another third company to register the domain. Currently, these providers make the process much easier for you, choosing from their website the hosting plan you need and choosing the domain name and TLD you need for registration and attribution.

El hosting, or hostingIt is precisely that, the space or infrastructure necessary to host the website or blog, which includes databases, CMS software, apps, files, and everything you need to upload. And that doesn't just include storage space, it also includes processing resources, RAM, bandwidth, etc.

On the other hand, The Dominion is the name that your website will have. The server you have hired has an IP assigned, but that is not intuitive for users who browse. For example, google.es uses a server with IP 142.250.217.67. But when you browse, you find it much easier to remember google.es than that number, right? Therefore, registering a domain will make your hosting have a more representative and easy-to-remember name (example.com, mycompany.es, sitename.org, etc.). That way, when users search for your registered name, it will appear in the search engine.

As you can see, the domain name is accompanied by a TLD (Top Level Domain), which is that .es, .com, .net., .org, etc. This extension can indicate the type of website it is, being .com for companies, .es for Spanish sites, .org for organizations, etc. You can also choose this when registering your domain name.

Ultimately, a great idea is to hire the hosting together with the domain name and TLD for your site. So you will have everything you need from the beginning. The only reason not to contract both services would be that you already have a registered name and you simply want to port it from a previous hosting service to your new hosting ...

• employee: I am referring to where said server is hosted, rather than technologies, brand, etc. Although it may not seem important, it is becoming more and more so. It is preferable that you choose services with data centers in Spain or any other country in Europe to ensure that they work under the European data protection law, which is the strictest. Avoid Chinese or North American services that will manage your data very differently.
• Hosting type: (see previous section to find out which type of plan is best for you: cloud, shared, VPS, dedicated, ...).
• Hardware or resources: in this sense, the amount of CPUs you have, the RAM, the available storage space (better if it is SSD versus HDD), or the network bandwidth is important. The greater the resources, the better performance and possibilities the service will offer you. In case of being a VPS, these values ​​will refer to virtual units (vRAM, vCPU,…), but for practical purposes it will be the same.
• Limitations- Pay particular attention to the limits that some services impose. Depending on the plan, you may have restrictions on the amount of data transferred per month or per day, and even on the bandwidth consumed. Very important data and that you will have to evaluate if they meet the approximate traffic that you will have on your site or not. In addition, there are some services that offer unlimited resources in this regard, which is very positive for not having to worry about it.
• Additional Services: As an extra you can look for other services or advantages offered by a hosting provider, such as the possibility of registering domains, choosing between different operating systems, maintenance, security functions, backup copies, SSL / TLS certificates for HTTPS, email services with own domain, automatic installation of CMS (Worpress, Blogger, MediaWiki, Moodle, Magento, PrestaShop, osCommerce, ownCloud, NextCloud, Drupal,…), etc. Another very positive point for some users is the accepted payment methods. Some prefer to do it by credit card, but there are also those who prefer to use other payment services, such as PayPal, etc.
• Technical support: Of course, if you have any questions, or the service stops working for something, it is important that your provider offers technical support in Spanish so that you can communicate with the attendees without problems. On the other hand, if the service is 24/7, you can count on them at any time that problems arise. And, as a plus, it can also be interesting that they have different means of contact (telephone, chat, email).

Last but not least, in these times it is also important to opt for the hosting and domain registration service with best quality / price ratio possible.

Be careful, as some free services, or excessively cheap, have a disastrous quality of service, and your website will be offline for more time than operational, which will not give a good feeling and will lose customers and visits that could be potential profits.

Among the other services with more or less affordable plans, analyze well what each one offers you. Some may seem very cheap in the base rate, but as you add some extras not included, the bill will get fatter. Always choose the providers that are as clear as possible, and that do not hide surcharges that do not show in the prices of the initial plans.

In addition, it is possible that those services that allow pay for hours of use, or resources used, may seem very cheap initially, but the flat rates guarantee that you will always pay the same whatever the use. While these could start to get fat and end up paying more than an average flat rate.