Web Hosting Costs: Understanding What You’re Paying For
3 weeks ago | 
by Charlie Cooper
We often get asked, why must I pay for hosting? This is a great question, and to understand the answer, we need to understand a bit about how websites work. Let’s jump in.
When you use a website and visit pages, you’re actually viewing a series of files.
These webpage files you’ve viewed aren’t too dissimilar from being a standard Word document, with the exception that they can use different content (and can be a bit more complex to make!).
Take this blog you’re reading, for example. Have you noticed that our other blog pages are exactly the same, but with different text content? That’s because blog pages are one file, that can show different data.
So let’s answer the question, the reason hosting is required for websites to function? It’s because a computer has to store those files and the data, ready to serve them when someone visits a webpage, and “requests” the documents.
A spacious server room much like those that serve websites across the globe
This computer, or “server” as it’s often called, runs 24/7 so people can always access your website, which is pretty amazing.
This is made possible by a team of people that work around the clock to keep a close eye on servers in server rooms all over the world, ready to fix any issues promptly.
With all of this in mind, hosting starts to seem quite inexpensive!