A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.


The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Demon and BT include this service as part of the package they supply to their subscribers. You can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. For personal web site hosting this is typically free, or can be advertisement-sponsored, however the services provided are often very basic so for a Business web site more complex packages are required, with the associated higher expense.


Large sites and especially eCommerce sites call for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Perl, Java, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management, whilst for eCommerce SSL is also highly recommended to get the golden padlock on pages that take personal details.


The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Some hosts also specialize in providing complete management services, they are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company.


Finding a web hosting company, can be difficult for newcomers as you need to be extremely careful when searching for a new company as many of the people promoting service providers are actually affiliates and therefore have an interest in promoting the company.


We have many years experience with web hosting packages and can recommend a suitable host for your requirements. Our own site is hosted with 1and1 who are based in Germany but we also have sites based with UK hosts, giving us the experience to advise on the most suitable for your application.

We can work with your existing host and just upload the new files for you or we can take responsibility for dealing with the web host and handle all the details of hosting your web as part of our fee.

Hosting services for the Web include:

• Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.


• Shared web hosting service: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.


• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server.


• Virtual Dedicated Server: dividing a server into virtual servers, where each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users.


• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it , however, the user typically does not own the server.


• Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and has a limited control over it, usually they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools.


• Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server.

In addition to hosting web sites other types of hosting provided by web host service providers include:

• File hosting service: hosts files, not web pages


• Image hosting service


• Video hosting service


• Blog hosting service


• Shopping cart software for an eCommerce site

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment. Remember that with 99% uptime, that means you will be unavailable for over 3.5 days in a year, even 99.9% means half a day is lost.

A common claim from the popular hosting providers is '99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't take into account other factors such as network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be much larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider and finding ways to monitor this is very difficult.

There are a number of companies providing a montoring service but they will only pickup a problem if the web site is down for some time, for example if they monitor a site every 30minutes then you could be down for 25 minutes during a monitoring period and this will not be recorded, if this happens once a week then you will lose almost 17.5 hours in a year but record 100% uptime.