Web hosting  is a service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on servers, generally located within data centres that provide Internet connectivity and high levels of availability.

Web hosting ranges from very cheap, low cost hosting through to dedicated servers, colocation and Virtualisation that can cost many thousands of dollars.

Services provided with web hosting

The services included with web hosting can vary greatly, however the majority of web hosting providers will include the following:

• Linux web hosting
• Windows web hosting
• Domain name registration
• Email services
• FTP accounts
• Web site statistics
• PHP/MySQL
• ASP, ASP.NET
• MS SQL
• CGI, Perl

New Zealand web hosting

Web hosting in New Zealand is generally more expensive than international web hosting, however is still relatively affordable with web hosting costing anything from $5 per month for basic hosting through to hundreds of dollars for a server.

The main benefit of New Zealand web hosting is lower latency (around 1/5 that of internationally hosted web sites). This ensures your web site is likely to load faster than sites hosted off-shore.

There is also anicdotal evidence that sites hosted locally are likely to rank better on search engines.