No wonder any person who is new to the world of website hosting, will probably be curious about “What is Web Hosting Vs Domain” ?
Year 1996 when domains were selling like hot cakes.. I was one of those people who had this assumption, that if I own a domain name, I will be able to access it in browser without having need of any other or additional services. Stupid me.. !! huh !!!!
I am sure, there are many other people who assume similarly and it is no wrong to do so because the idea of web hosting itself depends on these to factors..
- Web hosting &
- Domain name
To know the difference between the two, let’s discuss a very simple scenario from layman point of view..
Imagine you as a person, just purchased a piece of land in your town / city. Now as a person you cannot simply go there and start living on that land along with your family due to lack of shelter which is one of the three important necessities of a person. So in order for you and your family to live on that piece of land, you need to construct a house, which you can do so by first drafting a design for your desired house and then construct it with bricks and walls!
Domain Registration
So co-relating above scenario with the term of Web Hosting and domain, the piece of land you purchased can be considered as a domain name, which is of no use, unless it has hosting.
Just like piece of land is unique, so is your domain name. You purchase it to own it from a domain registrar, who sell different TLD domain names. TLD is term used for “Top Level Domain”. For eg, Google.com domain has TLD .com, or Nominet.co.uk has TLD .co.uk and so on. So every domain name is unique, which you can choose depending on your business or your personal identity.
At RShosting, we offer cheap domain names, that will help you to register your preferred domain name of your chosen TLD for a very competitive fee and help you secure your brand in market.
What is Web Hosting?
Alright, thats how a domain name would be registered. But the question is, if you register a domain name, is that all? Will you be able to browse it as a website in browser?
The websites that you see or come across on Internet are actually a collection of several files that are served to your phone or your laptop / desktop browser!
So when you put any domain url in browser, you see those files that reside on a server that provide information for that respective domain name. Which would mean, if you register a domain name, you also need to host your files that provide information for your domain on a server. RShosting offers one of the fastest web hosting for such domain names, where you can host your website from as low as $1.95 per month. You will get access to our cPanel control panel, where you can then upload your files including images, html files etc which will be visible on Internet in the form of website when your domain name is accessed in browser.
Different types of Web Hosting
To explain further about web hosting, there are several types of web hosting such as:
Shared Hosting: Ideally, the shared hosting plans are for those beginner or low traffic websites that receive moderate number of visitors. Your domain and website is hosted on shared server, where you share resources with several other similar customer websites in neighbourhood. Due to sharing of resources, Shared Hosting plans are cheap and affordable!
VPS Hosting: Imagine you hosted your website using shared hosting plan and this has really helped to boost your business. Your customers can now reach you anytime via your website and have increased your sales in terms of online orders. When your website receives high number of visitors, it is likely going to use high resources in terms of CPU, RAM etc at server end; on a shared hosting server. Now is the time, to switch or upgrade your hosting to higher resource hosting plan which is termed as VPS hosting. A VPS is a Virtual Private Server which offers dedicated resources and allows room for growth and expansion of your website! Since this is a Virtual Private Server, it will be expensive as compared to Shared Hosting, however it comes with root access so you will have complete and total control of your server and it’s services.
Reseller Hosting: Imagine you help customers design their websites. Not all of your customers may be technically sound, which means they will depend on you for hosting services. Our Reseller Hosting plans, allows you to project yourself as a parent hosting company in front of your customers and in return, you will be hosting your customer websites on our Cloud server under reseller hosting plan. One of the most major advantage of going with reseller hosting is that you get to host on monster resource powered Cloud server without having to invest in such expensive hardware and infrastructure. This allows you to make plenty of profit from your customer by offering them website hosting and web desigining services as a combo package and ideal deal to strike business!
Dedicated Server: Now that your business sales have sky rocketed, you obliviously need higher storage, higher computing processor, higher RAM and so on.. This is the right time to upgrade to our Managed Dedicated Cloud Servers which will offer you Dedicated Cloud resources and complete isolation from any other customer, thus securing your financial and sensitive information.
Since these servers are fully managed, you do not need to worry about the server setup or it’s security. Our 24/7 Support is on it’s toes to vigilantly guard your server and also offer regular updates and patches!
So ideally, if you own a domain name, you cannot simply access it in a browser. You will need to host your files on server, and point your domain to that server via DNS, and then the domain when accessed in browser will render your business related information and website.
The domain part is termed as Domain registration whereas hosting it’s files is termed as web hosting. I hope this article will help those who have just been introduced to the world of website hosting and help them choose the best hosting and domain for their websites!