Today, the internet is probably worth millions of gigabytes. All of this data is contained in many servers spread throughout the world. It is these servers that ‘host’ all the data you use and see – they provide a space for the data to stay. As the internet provided commercial viability, more and more people wanted a share of cyberspace. Thus, to service this rather insatiable demand for web space, hosting services came up in a big way, and Web Hosting became a commercial venture. Web hosting services provide clients with space for hosting their documents – text, voice, video or anything else – on the internet, thus putting them on the internet.

Many web hosting companies also fuction as Internet Service Providers. The scope of hosting can differ from one package to another; thus, there are web-page hosting services, file hosting services, services with database support and application development platforms (ASP, PHP, JSP, Perl, etc), forum or content management support, etc. Hosting type can also differ; thus, there are free hosting (usually advertisement supported), image hosting, shared hosting, clustered hosting, reseller hosting, virtual private server, dedicated hosting, colocated hosting and file hosting. These different hosting packages are meant to service different needs. One must keep in mind not only the present status but also one’s future scope of development while selecting a package, and should see that hosting space, traffic bandwidth allowed, and technologies allowed, etc, are there as required. There being so many hosting services, one must choose one that is reliable and has a reputation for efficient service, besides providing value added services like regular backups, troubleshooting, optimum uptime, etc.

In this section of the web directory, we provide links to many trusted web hosting services, directories on hosting services, and other related resources.

 Related Resources