Learning how to host a website is easier than you think—and you don’t need to be a web developer. Web hosting is like renting a secure, always-open internet storefront where customers and potential customers can visit and do business with you. 

This guide covers the fundamentals of web hosting, including the different types of web hosting and what web hosting providers do. You’ll get easy, step-by-step instructions for hosting your website and learn how to choose the right hosting solution for your business needs. 

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is the process of establishing a digital home for your website, making it accessible to internet users around the clock. Hosting involves paying for space on specialized, high-performance computers called servers that store website files, images, and data. 

When a user types your website’s address into their browser (the address is called a uniform resource locator, or URL), the browser sends a request to the host server. The server retrieves data and delivers website content back to the user’s browser in the blink of an eye, allowing them to view the site. 

Reliable web hosting keeps your site stable, safe, and responsive by managing web traffic, warding off security threats, and keeping your site running fast, even during traffic spikes. It helps you create a reliable experience that converts browsers into buyers. Most businesses, especially small and midsize ones, get hosting services from a third party, such as a hosting provider. 

Can you host your own website?

You can purchase servers and host your own website, although it is complicated and expensive. Doing so requires specialized technical skills to configure and manage the physical web server. You’d be responsible for ensuring 24/7 availability, maintaining server infrastructure, locating equipment, ensuring security, staying abreast of updates, and troubleshooting. Hosting is a complicated matter, and for many, a do-it-yourself approach is not the best usage of time.

Types of web hosting

There are several kinds of web hosting services, each serving different use cases (and with different hosting costs). Choose the type that suits your current and anticipated needs.

• Shared hosting. Multiple websites can share resources on a single server (like an apartment complex with multiple units). Shared hosting is inexpensive but can limit your site’s performance if you have a high-traffic or resource-heavy site.

• Dedicated hosting. With an entire physical server just for your site’s needs, dedicated hosting maximizes performance and security and gives you complete control. However, it’s more expensive and may require more maintenance. 

• Virtual private server (VPS) hosting. Striking a balance between shared and dedicated hosting, VPS hosting separates a physical server into virtual machines. VPS hosting provides dedicated resources and more control than shared hosting at a lower cost than dedicated hosting.

• Cloud hosting. This approach hosts a website across many connected servers instead of one physical server, offering high reliability and flexibility to respond to ebbs and flows in web traffic.

Web host provider vs. website builder

To understand the differences between a web host and website builder, imagine you’re building a house. A web host provides the land and infrastructure. The website builder helps you build a home (the website) on the provided land. 

A web hosting provider includes the storage and infrastructure that enables users to access your website’s files and data. Hosting providers maintain servers in secure data centers with climate control and backup power systems for optimal uptime and performance. They also manage software updates, security, and data backups, which lets you focus on building websites with great content and engaging with shoppers.

A website builder is an app for web development. It helps you design and create the website structure and content, often with drag-and-drop page assembly features. 

Some platforms, like Shopify, provide both hosting and a website builder. These integrated web hosting services eliminate the need to purchase separate hosting. When you subscribe to Shopify, all hosting infrastructure, maintenance, security, and scalability is included and managed by Shopify within a fully managed cloud hosting model. Put simply, you pay for the ecommerce platform, and the hosting is simply part of that service. 

What does a web hosting provider do?

Hosting providers keep your website up and running smoothly and securely. They help avoid problems like downtime or data loss, so you can focus less on the technical setup and maintenance and more on creating great, engaging content that connects to your audience. Web hosts manage nine critical functions:

• Storage and bandwidth. Hosts provide storage space for your website files and bandwidth to accommodate web traffic—ensuring your site doesn’t slow down or crash when traffic spikes during a product launch.

• Server maintenance. Hosts attend to server infrastructure and software updates, and optimize uptime and performance, using secured, climate-controlled data centers with backup power. This means your store stays online even during hardware failures or power outages.

• Security. Hosts safeguard your valuable data and customer information in a lot of ways: SSL certificate for encrypted traffic, malware protection, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, firewalls, and network monitoring.

• Backups. They perform automatic, periodic backups of your website data, which means you can recover quickly if something goes wrong.

• Domain management. Hosts make it easy to register a custom domain and connect your domain address to the server address, eliminating the technical complexity of DNS configuration.

• CMS support. They provide easy, one-click installations for popular content management systems (CMS). 

• Customer support. They offer 24/7 assistance via knowledge bases, email, chat, or phone, to help with technical issues and configurations.

• Scalability. They offer hosting options to upgrade resources as your website grows, allowing you to scale your web hosting plan to meet increasing traffic and evolving requirements.

• Additional tools. Extras like user-friendly control panels (like cPanel or hPanel), website building tools, FTP account, and email hosting, are included with the price of hosting, or available as add-ons.

How to host a website

1. Figure out your hosting requirements
2. Choose a web host provider and plan
3. Get a domain name
4. Connect your domain to your web host
5. Upload your website content to the server

Bringing a website to life online requires just a few steps:

1. Figure out your hosting requirements

Determine the type of website you want and the type of content system needed to manage it. This will help you decide between hosting providers.

Static websites (sites without interactive features) have more limited server needs compared to dynamic sites (those with lots of user engagement options like forms and product search). If you’re building a basic portfolio site or one-page website, a free website hosting provider might meet your needs, since you won’t get a lot of traffic and your site won’t have many interactive features. 

If you’re launching an ecommerce business, you want to deliver a flawless user experience for every website visitor, even if you receive an unexpected traffic bump because your product just went viral on TikTok. In this case, it makes sense to invest in high-quality hosting, since a website crash can impact your bottom line.

2. Choose a web host provider and plan

There are many excellent website hosts for small businesses. Now that your hosting requirements are clear, select a provider with the infrastructure your site needs. Options range from shared hosting for smaller sites to VPS, dedicated server, and cloud hosting for larger needs. Compare features like storage space, bandwidth, security, performance metrics, and cost.

3. Get a domain name

Purchase a domain from a domain registrar or get one through your chosen web host provider. Hosts frequently offer domain names for free or discounted rates for the first year, so check the recurring price to avoid hidden costs. Keep the domain name short, memorable, and relevant to your brand. “

4. Connect your domain to your web host

Connect your domain and hosting plan by setting up Domain Name System (DNS) settings. This connection is what allows customers to find your store when they type your domain name.

Your web host will provide the details like internet addresses for specific nameservers, which you’ll enter into the domain registrar’s settings to direct visitors to your website’s server. This process can take a few hours to propagate globally.

5. Upload your website content to the server

If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, hosting providers often include a one-click installation feature. 

If you have custom files, upload them manually using an FTP client or the hosting control panel’s file manager to the public_html directory. If you use Shopify to launch your online store, all of this will happen automatically.

Finally, test your website to ensure everything loads correctly.