# How to host a website > What hosting a website actually involves: domain, hosting, DNS and SSL, which type of hosting to pick, what it costs in India, and the order to do it in. Source: https://www.fasterhost.in/kb/how-to-host-a-website.php · Getting started · 8 min read · updated 25 September 2026 Hosting a website means renting space on a server that stays online, and pointing your domain at it. Four pieces have to line up — a domain, a hosting account, DNS, and a certificate. This is what each one does, which choices matter, and what it costs in India. ## The four pieces - **A domain** — the address people type. Rented yearly from a registrar. A `.in` runs roughly ₹500–900 a year, a `.com` ₹900–1,500. - **Hosting** — the server that stores your files and answers requests. From ₹49 a month for shared hosting. - **DNS** — the lookup that connects the two, so the domain resolves to the server. - **An SSL certificate** — encrypts the connection and gives you the padlock. Free. You can buy the domain and the hosting from different companies. Plenty of people do. ## Which type of hosting to pick The honest answer for almost every first site is shared hosting. The rest exist for specific problems: - **Shared hosting** — your site shares a server with others. Cheapest, managed for you, fine into the tens of thousands of visitors a month. - **WordPress hosting** — shared hosting tuned for WordPress, with caching and automatic updates. Worth it if the site is WordPress. - **Cloud hosting** — dedicated resources that scale. For stores and applications where an outage costs money. - **VPS** — your own virtual server with root access. For developers who want to run their own stack. - **Dedicated / VDS** — pinned physical cores. For databases and workloads that cannot tolerate contention. Starting small is not a mistake you have to undo painfully — upgrading is a support ticket, not a rebuild. ## Why the server location matters in India Distance is latency, and for pages built per visitor it is not something caching fixes. From a connection in Pune we measured about 60 ms to a server in Singapore and about 245 ms to one in Virginia, paid on *every* round trip before your site has done any work at all. To Mumbai it was under 5 ms, and [the figures for other Indian cities](https://www.fasterhost.in/india-latency-report.php) tell the same story. Two practical consequences: cheap overseas hosting often turns out to be the reason a site feels slow, and "free hosting" almost always means an overseas shared box with no support. If you are selling to Indians, host in India. Worth checking before you buy: where the data centre physically is, whether invoices carry GST for input tax credit, and whether support answers during Indian hours. ## The order to do it in - **1.** Register the domain. - **2.** Buy hosting and note the nameservers in the welcome email. - **3.** Point the domain at the hosting. - **4.** Wait for DNS, then issue the SSL certificate. - **5.** Install WordPress or upload your files. - **6.** Force HTTPS, set permalinks, and put a backup schedule in place. Steps 3 and 4 are the ones with a wait in them. Everything else is minutes. ## What it actually costs A working business website in India, first year: - Domain — ₹500–1,500 - Shared hosting — from ₹49/mo - SSL — free - WordPress and a decent theme — free, or ₹4,000–6,000 for a premium theme So the first year of a self-built site is the domain plus twelve months of hosting, with a premium theme the only large optional extra. The costs that surprise people later are renewal rates that differ from the introductory price, and paid add-ons for backups or SSL — which is why we print renewal rates next to every plan and include both. ## Common questions **Can I host a website for free?** Technically yes, and it is nearly always a false economy — free hosts put ads on your site, give you a subdomain rather than your own domain, offer no support, and run overseas, which is slow for Indian visitors. Shared hosting from ₹49 a month avoids all four. **Do I need to know how to code?** No. WordPress installs in one click and is managed through a visual admin. Coding knowledge helps for customisation, not for getting a site online. **Can I host multiple websites on one plan?** On most plans above the entry tier, yes — our Business plan hosts 25 sites and higher tiers hold 100 or more, each with its own domain and SSL. **How long does it take to get a website online?** The technical setup is under an hour. DNS propagation adds a few hours. Building the actual content is what takes the time. ## Related - [How to point your domain to your hosting](https://www.fasterhost.in/kb/point-your-domain-to-hosting.php) - [How to install WordPress](https://www.fasterhost.in/kb/install-wordpress.php) - [What is cPanel?](https://www.fasterhost.in/kb/what-is-cpanel.php) - [Shared Hosting](https://www.fasterhost.in/shared-hosting.php): Fast, affordable hosting for your first site - [WordPress Hosting](https://www.fasterhost.in/wordpress-hosting.php): Managed WordPress that flies - [Premium Cloud Hosting](https://www.fasterhost.in/cloud-hosting.php): High-availability cloud, Mumbai & Delhi NCR