Other options than hosting?

A question from a newbie...

Are there any other options to having a web site other than hosting? Do all the 'big sites' use hosting companies or do they have their own high-speed connection to the internet?

Thanks,
Mike.

If you want a web site on the Internet, you have to host it somewhere, whether it be on your own server or on a dedicated server or on someone else's server under a hosting plan they offer to you. Which of these options a company goes with really depends upon their amount of traffic, type of connection to the net, expertise of people working at the firm, and just opinions in general. It is generally accepted that if you have a small site a shared hosting plan (on someone else's server) is the most economical way to go, and it is much cheaper to colocate than maintain the speed and uptime on your own network.

Lots of mid-sized companies have a T1 line into their office building and use this line to give employees internet access and also use it to run their webserver from. But.. the 1.5 Mbit up/down that a T1 provides is limited when it comes to bandwidth so lots of times they also just host at a dedicated facility with faster internet connections

With all the web hosting companies, it is not a smart choice to bring in a t1 line to host a website as you can have access to full 100 Mbit connections to the internet at most hosting facilities.

Thanks guys for your clear advice and recommendations.

I will stick to using a hosting company as it seems to be the most economical and easiest way to go about setting up a web site with moderate expected usage.

Incidentally, what would 'average' bandwidth be these days? 50MB data transfer per day? More/less?

Cheers,
Mike.

Hey Mike,
it really depends on the type of site you have. I have some sites that I mainly use for email, but have minimal web content on them. These normally chew through about 150 megs per month. I also have a site with my wedding pictures on it and some of our clients have sites with very large files (PDF documents, map files for various online games, etc). These sites usually go through more bandwidth (anywhere from 2 or 3 gigs to 25, 30, or more), especially if they are popular.

Most good hosts these days will provide their clients with a control panel where they can check to see how much bandwidth they have used. We use CPanel on our servers and also allow our clients to run various statistical analysis programs which break down your web traffic for you.

If you are searching for a web host, I'd be happy to host your site. We give all of our devshed buddies one month free so you have time to evaluate our services. If you have any questions (about our services, hosting, or web sites in general), please feel free to email me or send me a private message.