Web hosting service

[5] To host a website on the internet, an individual or company would need their own computer or server.

Individuals and organizations may also obtain web page hosting from alternative service providers.

Business website hosting often has a higher expense depending upon the size and type of the site.

A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Java EE, Perl/Plack, PHP or Ruby on Rails).

These facilities allow customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is used for websites that wish to encrypt the transmitted data.

[citation needed] A hosting provider's Service Level Agreement (SLA) may include a certain amount of scheduled downtime per year in order to perform maintenance on the systems.

This scheduled downtime is often excluded from the SLA timeframe, and needs to be subtracted from the Total Time when availability is calculated.