If you're just starting out in the online business and you have no experience in this field, it can be daunting and confusing. What hosting do you need? The full bells and whistles or the Best Managed Wordpress Hosting?
No, it's not easy to know.
Before we go any further I need you to know that I have used many different hosting companies over the years and know all have their plus points and their downsides.
You also need to know I have my own private hosting platform so don't use any paid platform right now. I have no affiliation with any hosting platform so the recommendations I give are based on performance and pricing.
So, let's get down to it. Don't get caught up in the naming conventions, I'm talking about blog hosting, which is the same as web hosting because your Blog is your website... But you know that anyway.
First, the really bad news. Only 1 hosting company has consistently disappointed me and to explain I want to tell you a story. Some time ago I was looking to register a domain and started running domain searches for all the permutations of my company name. All the searches returned the result that the permutations were available, but I did not buy anything, preferring to return the next day after a 'cooling off' period.
The following day all the domain names had been taken. Interesting no? Pretty big coincidence right? Anyway a few months later I started receiving emails from someone trying to sell those domain names. Well it doesn't take a genius to work out what's going on does it? It's call domain squatting and it's illegal.
Someone who will remain nameless unless I want to find myself in court is either taking domain searches and registering them in order to resell them to the person searching for them at an inflated price, or it's an enormous coincidence. I had heard of this company and its practices but this was the first time I had experienced it 1st hand.
The best thing I can say is never run searches for available domain names through a hosting that sounds like Blow-Bady and I will say no more.
What Hosting Do I Need then?
Free Hosting There are still places to find free hosting for your website but this is only good for a noncritical website, perhaps a test site if you're learning how to create websites. For anything else, just stay away from them. Firstly, you can't trust them to be around in the morning and you will have no support. The other thing is your domain name will be something like (YOURDOMAIN.FREEDOMAIN) DOT COM which looks rubbish.
Shared Hosting A shared hosting is when your website shares a physical server and services with other websites. Your domain name is clearly yours like (MYDOMAIN) DOT COM and you will have support. This is a cheap option as the costs are shared between other clients, but the service could be slower than more expensive hosting.
Dedicated Hosting A dedicated hosting account gives you a dedicated server to yourself. Probably a virtual server, but still, the server and its services are dedicated to your website.
This is perfect for a business site and allows for quicker performance, but you'll be responsible for your server operation, so you're going to need a server administrator.
Colocated Hosting This is top of the tree in terms of taking control. This is when your business buys and runs its own server. This server will be kept in a data center where the environment is kept to its optimum. But you will be in full control of the administration unless you pay an additional fee for a data center administrator.
