- Web host A company that provides the technologies and services needed for your website to be found by your visitors on the internet. Web hosts own a number of physical servers that are used to store the files that make up your website.
- Traffic The number of visits your website receives. The more traffic you have, the more popular your website is. Web hosts provide servers that can accommodate specific quantities of traffic.
- Uptime The amount of time your website is available to your visitors Although most web hosts promise 99%uptime, you should know that means your website will be down 87 hours a year (1% of a year in hours). What you are essentially looking for is at least 99.99% uptime. That’s just 52 minutes of downtime during the year.
- Physical server Physical servers are powerful computers located inside a secure data center. These servers run operating systems and applications just like any ordinary computer would. They also contain internal hardware resources such as RAM, CPU cores, hard disk drives, solid-state drives, etc.
- Cloud server Cloud hosting is wherein your website data is spread out amongst a bunch of physical servers. These servers are then connected together in a virtual environment. Since you’re able to use so many servers to power your website, you essentially have access to infinite RAM, CPU power, disk space, etc.
- Bandwidth Bandwidth is the term used for the amount of data your website transfers to your website visitors. The reason bandwidth is important is because the more bandwidth you have, the faster data can be sent to your visitors. During traffic hours, you’re going to need a significant amount of bandwidth. So, it’s a good option to always buy a package that includes unlimited bandwidth.
- Domain A domain is the name of your website. It’s what people type into a browser when they want to view your website. Usually, a domain name is a mixture of letters and numbers. They usually end in extensions such as .com, .net, .info, etc.
- Virtual machine A virtual machine is a software developed on a physical server. In the hosting world, it is used to act as a dedicated server. It has its own operating system. It also has a certain amount of resources (RAM, disk space, CPU power) allocated to it by the physical server(host). Thanks to its resources, virtual machines are now used as servers to host websites, applications, etc.
- Dedicated server A dedicated server is an entire physical server solely dedicated to your website’s needs You gain access to 100% of its resources, and only you are able to use it.
- VPS VPS stands for “virtual private server.” A virtual server is created by splitting a physical server into tens or hundreds of pieces. Those pieces are known as virtual servers and are allotted a specific amount of the physical server’s RAM and storage resources.
