What Is Website Hosting And Maintenance? [2022]

You may have come across these terms quite often, but have you ever wondered what actually website hosting and maintenance are?

Every company that provides website development services to its clients knows the importance of hosting and maintenance. Routinely hosting websites and continuous maintenance keep the website performing high to handle the desired traffic or features and functionalities within the site. 

It is important here to note that not all websites require constant up-gradation in hosting and maintenance! There are static websites, which do not require constant updating and remain more or less the same on features and functionalities. These sites do not require heavy maintenance, and definitely do not demand changes in hosting capabilities.

But, what is website hosting and maintenance?

While hosting is necessary to bring any website to life, maintenance deals with regular updating and modifying the website, whether technically or the content within. Let’s dive deeper into what these actually mean.

What is website hosting?

Hosting is the digital home of your website, kind of an online space that you need to rent to house your website! The level of hosting varies from website to website, i.e. the features and elements of your website determine the server capacity. 

Hosting not only stores content and files that are on your website but also retrieves information by providing network connectivity whenever a user performs an action that demands a reaction from the website (downloads, redirects, etc.)

There are numerous web hosting companies out there selling multiple hosting plans, depending upon website requirements. Hosting is a recurring cost, on a monthly or annual basis, however, it is not expensive when you compare it with the overall cost of building a website!

Such hosting platforms enable you to share a virtual server with thousands of other websites! If any website from this cluster suffers a lot of loads, your website could be affected by it too! This is why you should not look to save cost here, as your server capacity will primarily determine site performance. 

After all, you do not want a lag time or worse, a crash, when customers are buying or even browsing your site!

Sites like Hostgator and Blue host offer web hosting services. 

These sites have multiple plans depending on your hosting requirements. It is advisable to go for a plan that is apt for your website. You really don’t want a crash when visitor traffic becomes heavier than you anticipated!

The hosting company will give you space and a network to make your website accessible on the internet. 

Types of Web Hosting

Yes, there are multiple forms of web hosting services available. But don’t worry, they are all meant for different websites, depending on their nature. The forms of web hosting are:

• Shared Hosting

This is the most popular form of web hosting which is also the most common. Shared hosting is the cheapest form of hosting for small businesses that do not have a highly technical website. 

As the name suggests, you would be sharing the server with many other websites, instead of renting out the entire space! It is also easy to use and ideal for beginners. 

• Dedicated Hosting

The polar opposite of shared hosting, dedicated hosting means renting out an entire server space without any sharing with other users. This may seem expensive, but a dedicated server offers high levels of performance and storage capacity with the added advantage of customizing the server as per your own website. 

Business owners should consider dedicated hosting if they are or expecting to receive huge volumes of traffic. 

• Cloud Hosting

A rather new kind of hosting, cloud hosting has become quite popular for more than one reason! In this form of hosting, the entire server remains in the cloud, virtual hardware, and it is extremely cost-friendly. 

Cloud hosting only demands payment for the space you are using, so it is very well-suited for websites that receive fluctuating traffic. It is also a reliable form of hosting, as your website would be moved to a functioning server in the network if your original cloud server cluster is not functioning properly. 

• VPS Hosting

VPS hosting creates a virtual server that is dedicated to a single website. However, it retrieves information from other servers that are being shared by other websites. 

VPS Hosting offers better server resources and also improves site performance with flexibility in your use of server space. 

• WordPress Hosting

This form of hosting is particularly for WordPress websites as the server is fully optimized for the open-source platform. WordPress hosting is fully safe, enables good performance, and is easy to maintain. 

 What is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is the process of regularly updating your site for the following:

• Content updates 
• Updating Plugins and Modules
• Backup Scheduling
• Server-based security updates 

So website maintenance is done to fix issues like slow response time, outdated content, or just to change the look and feel of the site. 

Why is Website Maintenance important?

Maintaining your website is important for a number of reasons. They are as follows:

• Updating software

Websites need to be regularly updated for their security and performance. You can also leverage any new technology or tool and integrate it on your website while the maintenance is going on. 

• Enhances Security

Websites are programmed in lines of code, which are vulnerable to hacking. You can keep this at bay with regular updations to resolve any security lapses. 

• Backup

Backup is important so that no information is lost if the website needs to be redesigned for any reason. 

• Increases visitor engagement

No one wants to read the same old content time and again! Churning out fresh content on your website is essential to retain users and increase engagement. 

• Better SEO 

Updating fresh content on the website also helps in indexing your site as search engines prefer to rank sites with new content. 

• Improves visitor experience

Regularly monitoring the site for any lapses or lags with maintenance ensures that visitors to your website get a fast and responsive experience on your online brand space, free from server errors and broken links. 

Get easy hosting and maintenance services

Website hosting and maintenance are really, the regular job that an IT company can be entrusted with! If you want to know more about web hosting or website maintenance services, contact us and we will be happy to guide you through your business requirements!