Grow your freelancing business with DigitalOcean

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is an online service that allows for the website you’ve built to be made available on the internet to website visitors. Every website you visit online needs web hosting to store the various files, including code, pictures, videos, and more, that makes up a complete website.

DigitalOcean is a web hosting provider that offers many web hosting services that enable your website to run faster, more securely, and at an affordable price. Cloudways, our managed web hosting offering, makes it even easier for you to launch your website by taking the management of your web hosting infrastructure off of your plate. Digitalocean offers performant and affordable web hosting for freelancers, so you can reliably host your website using a simple cloud solution.

Are there different kinds of web hosting?

There are many different kinds of web hosting and web hosting services. These different web hosting options fit different use cases and needs, as there is no one-size-fits-all or single best web hosting provider or service for every use case.

Some web hosting choices worth considering are:

• Dedicated hosting vs shared hosting: Do you want your web application run on dedicated servers that are only running your application, or are you okay with your web application sharing server space securely with other applications?

• Affordability and the price: While cheap web hosting can help with the bottom line, some hosting companies may skimp on features (such as security features or performance features) to cut costs. Make sure your hosting plan fits all your needs beyond just price.

• Web hosting provider location: Where is most of your traffic coming from? Does your web hosting service have data centers geographically where you most need them to ensure your website’s performance?

• The right included or free features: Many web hosting providers will offer features or tools included in their web hosting service (such as a free SSL certificate, a free domain, a free website builder, free website migration services, unlimited websites, unlimited bandwidth, and more). These included offerings can be great, but make sure you’re getting everything you need from your hosting provider

Web hosting is critical for freelance businesses to succeed, so it is important to do your due diligence on the web hosting provider you’re considering. We hope you will consider DigitalOcean and Cloudways to be your web hosting service.

What are the most popular web hosting services available?

DigitalOcean and Cloudways are web hosting providers with many of the cloud hosting services a freelance business needs to get the best web hosting for their business. Some of our offerings include:

• Managed web hosting via Cloudways

• Virtual machines, with a range of configurations for different use cases

• Managed Kubernetes for scaling and orchestration

• App Platform for fully managed infrastructure

• Managed databases for MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis®

• Object storage that is S3-compatible with a built-in content delivery network (CDN)

• And more!

We are experts on the underlying cloud hosting that’s needed for your business to run. While many other web hosting providers might focus on more superficial features like a free domain or a free website builder, we’re focused on helping your business launch and grow in the long run.

There are many great web hosts out there, but we hope you will consider us for your web hosting and as your web hosting service.

Does DigitalOcean offer WordPress hosting?

DigitalOcean and Cloudways are a great choice for WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting, respectively. WordPress hosting or managed Wordpress is an important need for many freelancers, especially those building multiple sites. So we’ve built several ways to do your WordPress hosting through DigitalOcean:

• Managed WordPress hosting with Cloudways

• One-Click Wordpress installation with DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean makes it easy and affordable to quickly spin up a WordPress site, taking advantage of all the great features WordPress has to offer. Check out our hosting plans and create a hosting account with DigitalOcean to learn more and start building.

Need help to get started? Reach out to our sales team for help with free automated WordPress migrations.

Is there a difference between a cloud hosting provider and a hosting provider?

Cloud hosting provider and hosting provider are often used interchangeably. A cloud hosting company focuses on providing a web hosting service through the cloud (in other words, not on the premises of your specific business). Companies like DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, AWS, etc. are hosting providers with cloud hosting offerings.

In your research, it is probably safe to assume that the terms web hosting company, hosting service, web host, hosting company, hosting platform, etc. can all be used interchangeably.

Who offers the best web hosting for freelancers? Does DigitalOcean provide the best web hosting for freelancers?

There are many options out there that could be a great fit for your freelancing business, and the web hosting solution you choose should come down to your unique needs. If you are looking for simple, cost-effective web hosting that’s built to support growing businesses, Cloudways by DigitalOcean or DigitalOcean Droplets (our virtual machines) could be excellent choices for your web hosting. We hope that after using our services, you’ll think DigitalOcean and Cloudways both offer some of the best web hosting for freelancers available todays DigitalOcean’s solutions are built for growing businesses, and we pride ourselves in being one of the best web hosting providers specifically for freelancers, web designers, and web developers.

Always be cautious when exploring a web hosting service that claims they offer the best web hosting or have the best web hosting offerings. Again, there is no ‘best web hosting’ as each business’s needs are going to be different and thus the best web hosting will be different business to business. You should seek out the best web hosting for you and the best web hosting for your business.

Do you offer a free domain (aka free domain name) with your web hosting?

We are not one of the few web hosts who offer a free domain name with our web hosting. Both DigitalOcean and Cloudways are focused on providing freelancers with highly performant hosting services—we focus on having reliable cloud infrastructure that you and your customers can count on. There are plenty of hosting providers out there that offer a free domain name or hosting providers that will let you purchase a domain name, but they may offer less performant cloud hosting options.

If a free domain is essential for your web hosting company, you can always use popular website builders like WordPress or even GitHub which both offer a free domain (you can even get more than one free domain), and then still use DigitalOcean’s web hosting service for your overall shared hosting (shared servers), dedicated hosting (dedicated servers), or managed hosting.

What is the difference between dedicated hosting and shared hosting?

Many web hosting companies offer one or both of dedicated web hosting and shared web hosting.

The difference between dedicated hosting and shared hosting is with dedicated hosting your own website is hosted on a server without anyone else’s applications also hosted on that same server. With shared hosting, your website or web application is hosted alongside other users’ or businesses’ applications.

Typically shared hosting is lower cost and doesn’t require the user or business owner to be as technical. But, if you choose to use shared hosting, it is important you ensure the web hosting companies you do shared hosting with are ensuring that separate users or businesses on that shared hosting plan are kept separate and secure from each other. In other words, security is a much more important consideration if you choose to go with shared web hosting.