Web hosting can be compared to telephone service. If you have a phone, but do not hook up local and long distance phone service through a phone company, the actual phone itself won’t function the way it was intended. Likewise, you may have website files, but until you upload them to a web server, your files will not be viewable via the Internet.
A server dedicated to a website and email with a direct connection to a stable Internet backbone is required to host a website. Web hosting companies exist because these requirements are often out of reach for the average business and general users of the Internet. By investing in equipment and network architecture, a web hosting company specializes in making websites available quickly through the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unless you have the knowledge and resources it takes to run a web server and mail server in-house, you will probably require the services of a web hosting company. |
