What is web hosting, and how does it work?

Web hosting in one paragraph

Every website is a set of files: HTML pages, images, stylesheets, scripts and often a database. For people to see those files, they have to sit on a computer that is switched on, connected to the internet and running web server software. That computer is a server, and web hosting is the service of renting space and computing power on one. The hosting company buys the hardware, keeps it in a data centre with stable power and network links, and looks after the server software. You pay a monthly or yearly fee and get a control panel to manage your share.

A simple way to picture it: your domain name (yourbusiness.in) is the shop's address, and hosting is the shop premises where the stock is kept. Our guide to domain vs hosting covers that relationship in more detail.

How a visit reaches your website

When someone in Pune types yourbusiness.in into a browser, several things happen within moments. Understanding them helps when you are fixing a problem later.

1. The browser asks DNS where the site lives. The Domain Name System works like a phone directory for the internet. Your browser (through your internet provider's resolver) asks DNS for the IP address linked to yourbusiness.in. The nameservers you set for your domain hold the answer. Our guide on what DNS is explains records and nameservers.
2. DNS returns an IP address. This is the numeric address of the server where your hosting account lives, for example a four part IPv4 address.
3. The browser connects to that server. It opens a connection, and on any modern site it sets up an encrypted HTTPS session using the SSL/TLS certificate installed on your hosting.
4. The browser sends an HTTP request. In effect it says "please send me the home page of yourbusiness.in".
5. The web server prepares a response. For a plain HTML site it simply reads the file from storage. For WordPress or another PHP application it runs code, queries the database and builds the page on the spot.
6. The server sends the response back. The browser receives the HTML, then asks for every image, font and script the page refers to, and draws the page.

Because one server can hold many websites, the request also carries the domain name, so the server knows which account's files to serve. This is how shared hosting fits hundreds of sites on one machine.

Why this matters: most "my website is down" problems sit at one of these steps. If DNS points to the wrong IP, step 2 fails. If the certificate has expired, step 3 shows a warning. If the code has an error, step 5 returns a 500 error. Knowing the chain tells you where to look.

The main types of web hosting

Hosting types differ in how much of a server you get and how much you manage yourself.

Type	What you get	Who it suits	Typical management
Shared hosting	An account on a server shared with many other customers, with fixed limits on storage, sites and email	Business sites, blogs, small shops, portfolios	Host manages the server; you manage your site through a control panel
VPS (virtual private server)	A virtual machine with its own allocated RAM, CPU cores and storage	Growing sites, custom applications, developers	You manage the operating system and software, or pay someone to
Dedicated server	A whole physical server for one customer	High traffic platforms, heavy databases, compliance needs	You (or your IT team) manage almost everything above the hardware
Cloud hosting	Resources drawn from a pool of servers, often billed by usage	Applications that need to scale up and down	Varies widely by provider
Website builder hosting	Hosting bundled into a builder subscription	People who want no technical work	Fully handled, but tied to that builder

Within shared hosting you will also see a split by operating system. Linux hosting with the cPanel control panel runs PHP, MySQL and WordPress. Windows hosting with the Plesk control panel is used for classic ASP.NET applications that need Windows and IIS. If you are unsure which you need, the shared vs VPS comparison and the Linux vs Windows comparison are good next reads.

What you get with a hosting plan

Plan tables use a lot of jargon. These are the items you will see most often and what they mean in practice.

• Storage: disk space for your files, databases and often email. Listed in GB. NVMe is a fast type of solid state storage.
• Number of websites: how many separate domains you can host on one account.
• Email accounts: mailboxes on your own domain, such as accounts@yourbusiness.in.
• Databases: separate MySQL databases. WordPress needs one per site.
• Bandwidth: the amount of data your site can send to visitors. "Unlimited" usually means "subject to fair use".
• SSL certificate: enables HTTPS so the browser shows a secure connection.
• Backups: copies of your account kept by the host, with a stated frequency.
• Control panel: a web dashboard (such as cPanel or Plesk) to manage files, email, databases and domains without using commands.
• Uptime figure: the percentage of time the host aims to keep the server reachable.

Our guide to hosting terms explained goes through bandwidth, uptime, storage and RAM with worked numbers.

ODHOST note: ODHOST's five shared plans come with a control panel and list NVMe storage, a free SSL certificate, weekly backups, "unlimited bandwidth" under fair use terms and 99.9% uptime. They start with Spark at ₹99 a month for one website, 10 GB NVMe, 5 email accounts and 5 databases. Customers who need Windows or ASP.NET should contact ODHOST. The full line up is on the web hosting overview.

What hosting does not include

New owners are often surprised by what is not part of hosting.

• The domain name. A domain is registered separately with a registrar. Some hosts bundle one; many, including ODHOST at present, ask you to use a domain you already own.
• Website design. Hosting is the premises, not the interior. You still need to build the site yourself, with a builder or CMS such as WordPress, or through a developer.
• Content and updates. Keeping WordPress, themes and plugins updated is usually your job on shared hosting.
• Marketing. Hosting does not get you onto Google. You still need to submit your site to Google Search Console and create useful content.

Choosing your first hosting plan

For most small Indian businesses, the starting point is simple: a Linux shared hosting plan with enough storage for the site and the number of mailboxes your team needs. Move to a VPS when you need reserved resources or software that shared hosting does not allow, and to a dedicated server only when a VPS is clearly not enough.

Before buying, check four things that matter more than the headline price:

1. The renewal price, not only the first term price.
2. Whether you must prepay several years to get the advertised price.
3. Whether taxes are included in the displayed price.
4. How support works: by ticket, phone or chat, and during which hours.

If you want a structured way to decide, our guide on how to choose a hosting plan walks through sites, traffic, email, operating system and budget with worked examples.

A short glossary for this page

• Server: a computer that stores data and answers requests from other computers over a network.
• IP address: the numeric address of a device on the internet.
• DNS: the system that translates domain names into IP addresses.
• HTTP and HTTPS: the rules browsers and servers use to request and send web pages. HTTPS adds encryption.
• Data centre: a building designed to house servers with backup power, cooling and multiple network links.