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GITK's Web Hosting Services
About Web Hosting
Web Hosting is storage space on the Internet, providing the ability to present your website to the world. If you require a website, you will need somewhere to put it, therefore Web hosting (or webspace) is an absolute necessity. It is primarily used as a place to store your webpages but can also be used for mobile file storage, accessible from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.
The differences between Web Hosts
There are many types of hosting services, ranging in price tremendously. From free hosts, which usually offer banner adverts or pop-up adverts in exchange for webspace, to dedicated servers, alowing massive file storage and processing power.
The main types that are available include- "Free" hosting
- Cheap hosting services
- Enhanced hosting services
- Dedicated Servers
Free hosting has one big real advantage. It's free. For a small personal homepage with no behind-the-scenes code (e.g. forums, scripts etc), and if you're willing to put up with banners adverts/popup adverts, this could suit many users. However, these servers are usually highly restricted on features, space and bandwidth, and rarely support anything other than simple plain web pages. They are also totally unsuitable for business usage, as almost any business is considered unprofessional if stored on one of these free hosting sites, especially with the possibility of having to include a banner or advert to another company, which looks both unprofessional and may contradict the look and feel of your website. There can be thousands of sites stored on each server, which may lead to slow access and overloading.
Cheap hosting has advantages and disadvantages. The benefits are that it is cheap, and is usually simple to set up. These hosting companys often overload there servers with hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of websites causing your sites to slow down, which in turn puts off potential visitors. Whilst the service may be cheap, they are often lacking desired features, and/or set packages which must be adhered to. For example, if you wanted an extra database from many hosting companies, they would force you to upgrade your entire package, instead of the component you wanted, or charge an inflated amount for a simple extra service - e.g. a domain name, SQL database access (used for most dynamic sites - e.g. portals, forums etc). These restrictions can cause major problems when you want to further the development of your website.
Enhanced hosting services tend to have a much richer feature set, but at a price. Full access is usually provided to all the technical requirements, e.g. SQL, PHP, Perl, CGI etc, and provide what most people need. They are usually at least twice the price of the cheap web hosts, although overall, they often work out cheaper due to the unexpected extra costs for additional features from cheap hosts.
Dedicated servers are a perfect way around most of these restrictions - you run the server yourself. Whether manually configured or set up with the aid of a control panel, these are often difficult to initially set up and very time consuming, but totally customizable. However, it far exceeds most peoples needs, and especially their budget. A dedicated server is usually only needed for massive sets of websites, performing highly intensive tasks.
In summary, you need to work out precisely what features you require for your website before making any decision on the type of hosting you need.
We have included a simple comparison chart of hosting companys that provide a similar setup to our starter package, to give you an idea of how webhosting can vary in price and services, which can be viewed here.
What we offer...
At GITK Services, you can have the package that you want with minimum fuss. We have listed a few sample packages, but we also provide the unique Create your Own Package service, where your wish is our command, right down to the last detail! If you know what you need from a web host, you will find it as an option. We also have standard software that is provided with all hosting solutions regardless of package type, including PHP, MySQL, and Perl. More details are available here.
We also include full DNS-blocklist based spam filters, which blocks around 90% of spam from known sources and open relays, without exterior filters or analysis, which can often identify mail as spam.
These items are (and will continue to be) available at no extra cost, unlike much of our competition. Our level of service is very important to us, and we guarantee to only host a maximum of 200 sites (depending on size and usage) on a single server. This ensures that your website will always reach the visitor as rapidly as possible, rather than waiting for traffic from hundreds of other sites hosted on the same server.