4 Steps: How to Host Your Own Website from Home (2025)

Host Your Own Website

Key Takeaways

  • Self-hosting is ultimately not practical for any serious project.

  • Hosting your own website requires time, money, and technical skill beyond the scope of most people.

  • Most users are best suited by purchasing a third-party web hosting plan — it's cheaper and way easier to set up.

Learning how to host your own website sounds like a daunting task, no matter if it’s your first site or 100th. Fortunately, you have tons of options when figuring out where to house your burgeoning online presence.

Just as your choices for making a website range from using a super-simple site builder to hand coding, hosting a website can be as easy — or as difficult — as you wish. We much prefer coupling performance and security upgrades with peace of mind by finding a respected web hosting provider, but the more adventurous may opt to run a server from home.

Hosting your own website still has some serious obstacles, including dynamic IP addresses, bandwidth constraints, and electricity costs, but we can walk you through how to set up a server for Windows — or Linux-based sites. Up first, take a look at how to host your own server, or skip ahead to third-party hosts using the links below:

How to Host Your Own Server

For the more adventurous tech nerds out there, and we mean that endearingly, there are few greater allures than becoming your own website host. Cut out the third-party hosting providers by following these steps.

Windows: How to Host Your Own Website Using Your PC as a WAMP Server

First, let’s try hosting a website using your personal computer with the Windows operating system. Less than one-third of all websites use Windows, meaning your hosting options tend to be a little more limited than those of Linux developers. But if ASP.NET and C are what you code in, then Windows is the way to go.

Step 1: Get Started With WAMP

To make this super easy, we’ll use a WAMP installation program (of which there are several) called WampServer. This will cover your Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. You could also opt to install each package manually, but this process requires much more work and is error-prone.

WampServer screenshot
WampServer is one of several environments available to create Apache, MySQL, and PHP applications on Windows.

First, download the 32-bit or 64-bit WAMP-binary here, follow the on-screen instructions, and launch WampServer when it’s done. (Note: There may be a port 80 conflict with your Skype software, but there’s a fix for that.)

Upon installation, a www directory will be created automatically. You’ll likely find it here: c:wampwww

From that directory, you can create subdirectories (called “projects” in WampServer), and put any HTML or PHP files inside those subdirectories. If you click on the localhost link in the WampSever menu or open your internet browser with the URL http://localhost, you should be shown the main screen of WampServer.

Step 2: Create an HTML Page and Configure MySQL

To test our WampServer, we can put an example file called “info.php” into our www-directory. Go directly to this directory by clicking “www directory” in the WampServer menu. From there, create a new file with the sample code below and save it.

a screenshot of text editor
Save a new file with the above code.

Now you can browse to http://localhost/info.php to see the details of your PHP installation. You can create any HTML and PHP file structure to suit your needs.

If you click on the phpMyAdmin menu option, you can start configuring your MySQL databases (which may be needed for a CMS like WordPress). The phpMyAdmin login screen will open in a new browser window. By default, the admin username will be root, and you can leave the password field blank.

From there, you can create new MySQL databases and alter existing ones. Most software, like WordPress, will automatically set up a new database for you, though.

Step 3: Make the Site Public

By default, the Apache configuration file is set to deny any incoming HTTP connections, except in the case of someone coming from the localhost. To make your site publicly accessible, you need to change the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf). You can find and edit this file by going to the WampServer menu, clicking Apache, and selecting httpd.conf. Find these few lines of code:

a screenshot of httpd configuration file
Replace “Order Deny,Allow” with “Order Allow,Deny” and change line 3 to “Allow from all.”

In the screenshot above, you would replace line 2 with “Order Allow,Deny” and change line 3 to “Allow from all.”

Restart all WampServer services by clicking “Restart All Services” in the menu. The site should now be accessible from beyond your localhost. Confirm there isn’t a PC firewall blocking web requests. You may need to set up port-forwarding on your internet router as well.

Step 4: Using a Domain Name

To use a domain name with your WAMP installation, we’ll need to configure some files first. Let’s assume that our example.com domain has an A record in your DNS with the IP address 100.100.100.100.

First, we need to add the following line to the C:Windowssystem32driversetchosts file:

100.100.100.100 example

Next, we need to edit the httpd.conf file again (accessible via the WampServer menu) to add a virtual host. Once that file is open, look for “Virtual hosts,” and uncomment the line after it, which should be this:

# Virtual hosts
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Now, we need to manually add a file in “C:wampbinapacheApache-VERSIONconfextra” (VERSION is your Apache version). Create a file in Notepad, or your text editor of choice. Add the following code, and save the file in that Apache directory.

a screenshot of new file in apache directory
Create a new file with the code shown, and save it in your Apache directory.


Click “Restart All Services” in the WampServer menu to activate these changes. Confirm your site is accessible via its domain name. Voila!

Linux: How to Host Your Own Website on a Linux Machine

Let’s now cover how to set up Apache, MySQL, and PHP on a Linux system. LAMP stacks are the most common Linux hosting configuration but don’t be afraid to play with NGINX or LiteSpeed webservers.

Step 1: Install Your Software Using the Terminal

To start our LAMP software install, type the following in the terminal:

sudo apt install apache2 mysql-server php libapache2-mod-php7.0


During the installation process, you will be asked to enter (and re-enter) a password for the MySQL root user. Technically, it’s not necessary (as it should have been done upon installation), but just to be sure, we will restart the Apache webserver.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Any time you change the global configuration of Apache, you need to execute the command below, unless you do the configuration using local .htaccess files.

Step 2: Check PHP

To confirm your PHP server works and see what PHP modules are currently available, you can place a test PHP file in the webserver root directory (/var/www/html/):

sudo echo "" > /var/www/html/info.php

We can now visit that PHP page by browsing to http://localhost/info.php.

You should see the currently running PHP version, current configuration, and currently installed modules. Note that you can later install other PHP modules using the Ubuntu package manager, as some PHP applications might require that. To determine which extra modules are available, search within the graphical package manager, or simply use the command line:

apt search php | grep module

Step 3: Check MySQL

As most content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, use MySQL databases, we should also confirm our installation worked and the software is fully updated. To see if your MySQL installation is working, type “service mysql status” into the terminal.

If you don’t see that the MySQL Community Server started, you can type “sudo service mysql restart” to restart the MySQL server. From here, we can use the MySQL command-line client to manage databases.

For this, we need to use the admin credentials we typed earlier when MySQL was installed. Reach the login prompt by entering:

$ mysql -u root -p

The CMS will often automatically create the database for you, but sometimes you need to do something to the database manually. PHPMyAdmin is a friendly database management tool most web experts will recommend.

Finally, configure the /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php file using the steps described here.

Step 4: Configure DNS

To use your own domain for your local web server, you’ll need to configure Apache to accept web requests for your domain. First, make sure your domain’s DNS has an A record (which points to a specific IP address) for your domain name, e.g., www.example.com. Your DNS hosting provider will have online tools to correctly set up these DNS records.

Once that is done, we’ll use the dig tool. To request the A record for www.example.com, type:

$ dig www.example.com A	 
;; ANSWER SECTION:	 
www.example.com. 86400 IN A 100.100.100.100	 
AUTHORITY SECTION:	 
example.com. 86398 IN NS a.iana-servers.net.	 
example.com. 86398 IN NS b.iana-servers.net.

You can use this tool to direct a URL, such as http://www.example.com, to the server with an IP address you specify.

Step 5: Configure Apache

Now, we need to tell Apache to accept web requests for our name www.example.com and from what directory to serve content when we get those requests. To do that, we’ll set up a directory for our example.com domain.

screenshot of code editor
Type the code shown into your sample index.html file for your domain.

Create an example index.html file before setting some filesystem permissions using the code above.

To see the page, the last step is to set up a Virtual Host file for Apache for our domain.

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf


Now edit the file to look like this (the optional comments are not shown here):

edit file in code editor
Edit your file using the code guidelines shown.


Next, reload Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo a2ensite example.com.conf

sudo service apache2 reload


Edit your local /etc/hosts file by adding a line with your IP address and domain name. Be sure to change the “100.100.100.100” to match the IP address of your domain:

100.100.100.100 example.com


We can now visit your self-hosted site by going to http://www.example.com.

Pros and Cons of Self-Hosting

Now that we’ve discussed the nitty-gritty of self-hosting, let’s take a look at the pros and cons:

Pros

  • A highly educational and fun experience for those who enjoy tech
  • Control over your resources and data
  • Flexibility and no restrictions on uploads
  • No contracts
  • Your choice of hardware and software

Cons

  • High costs, including electricity bills and hardware expenses
  • Time-consuming server maintenance
  • Quality of speed and uptime
  • The challenge of backups, security, and updates
  • Lack of technical support or assistance

As illustrated by the table above, self-hosting isn’t all smooth sailing. Though it can be a challenging but rewarding experience for tech hobbyists, the adventures of self-hosting come with traversing some tough terrain, including high costs. Weighing the pros and the cons will be key in making your final decision.

Whatever you choose, we have the deets to help you embark on either route — both leading you to the end of the journey, your website. Read further to check out our top web hosts and instructions for getting started with self-hosting from home.

Why You Should Buy Web Hosting

Instead of trying to host a website locally, you can go through a web hosting provider and still have the same control of server management with more support and peace of mind. A shared hosting plan is the best for beginners and those who need affordable solutions, while virtual and dedicated hosting options allocate more server resources and fine-grain control.

When you purchase a web hosting plan from a hosting service, you get oodles of features. Common perks may include unlimited bandwidth, a free website builder, 24/7 customer support, and an intuitive control panel to accomplish site administration tasks.

Web hosting gives you everything in one place, including customer support, so you won’t have to go on the hunt to solve server issues or find additional resources. Below, we’ll dive into some of our favorite web hosts so you can determine whether third-party web hosting is the right fit for you.

Best Cheap (Shared) Hosting

For those looking for the easiest way to host your own website, look no further than the affordable shared hosting providers listed below. Don’t let the low prices fool you — a shared web hosting company still provides premium services with personable customer support available 24/7.

Shared computing resources mean you sacrifice a little bit of flexibility, but you should find all your software needs met with easy one-click installations, free domain registration, and automatic SSL certificates.

Take a look at our reviews of the best shared hosting plans:

1. Hostinger.com

Hostinger Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.69

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  • Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
  • FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
  • FREE daily or weekly backups
  • Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
  • SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Contributing Expert

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations’ products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world’s top hosting providers.

(HostingAdvice.com): As the shared hosting market has become more saturated, things like unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become the norm. Hostinger, however, goes above and beyond the norm by also giving users an unrestricted  number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains for most plans. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 25 GB SSD – 100 GB NVMe FREE (1 year) 3 minutes

2. ScalaHosting.com

ScalaHosting Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.51

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  • 1-click install for WordPress, Drupal and 400 others
  • Unlimited email accounts, databases & bandwidth
  • 24/7 tech support for beginners and pros alike
  • 12-month or 36-month plan at $2.51 /month
  • Anytime unconditional money-back guarantee
  • Get started on ScalaHosting now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Contributing Expert

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations’ products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world’s top hosting providers.

(HostingAdvice.com): In a budget web hosting market that’s fiercely competitive,  ScalaHosting stands out by delivering a premium hosting experience that surpasses most. This premium experience includes all-SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, databases, and email accounts — to go along with a topnotch support team. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD – 50 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 6 minutes

Beginner website owners really can’t go wrong with a shared hosting plan. The value it provides for its price is a fair bargain. Plus, shared hosting accounts are also easy to manage. Unlike unmanaged VPSes and dedicated servers, every shared host provides an easy-to-use control panel for website management. Although you can’t beat its price, shared hosting doesn’t offer as many resources or control as VPS or dedicated servers.

More shared hosting providers »

Best VPS Hosting

The primary advantage of a VPS, or virtual private server, is scalability — and the fact that you can scale up resources only as you need them, making it cost-efficient, too. You get maximum flexibility and control whether you choose a managed service or opt to handle server configurations and maintenance yourself.

Check out reviews of the VPS providers we recommend if this alternative sounds up your alley:

3. Hostinger.com

Hostinger Review

Monthly Starting Price $4.49

Visit Site »
  • NVMe SSD storage and 1GB network speed
  • Automatic weekly backups and Kodee AI assistant 
  • FREE dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
  • Custom control panel for reboots and OS installs
  • 1-click operating system template and API access
  • HostingAdvice readers enjoy more than 50% off
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Contributing Expert

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations’ products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world’s top hosting providers.

(HostingAdvice.com): Hostinger’s laser focus on providing affordable hosting solutions shines brightest with the company’s VPS packages. The company provides four different virtual server plans, including one that costs less than $5. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
6 minutes 50 GB NVMe – 400 GB NVMe 1 – 8 cores 4 GB – 32 GB

4. InterServer.net

InterServer Review

Monthly Starting Price $3.00

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  • $0.01 for the first month using code HOSTINGADV
  • Then $6 monthly with no contracts, no changes
  • Latest of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, and Ruby
  • 7 operating system options for Linux or Windows
  • Full root access and choice of datacenter
  • Get started on InterServer now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Contributing Expert

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations’ products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world’s top hosting providers.

(HostingAdvice.com): InterServer’s on-site datacenter and hands-on involvement with configuring and provisioning virtual private servers give customers a level of flexibility not seen with many other hosting providers. InterServer rations VPS and cloud resources through slices. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
6 minutes 30 GB SSD – 480 GB SSD 1 – 16 CPUs 2 – 32 GB

Once you’ve outgrown the resource constraints of a shared server, it’s time to upgrade to a VPS. The best part is that many entry-level VPS plans cost roughly the same as shared servers. You can spend as little (or as much) as you want.

More VPS hosting providers »

Best Dedicated Servers

The perks to dedicated hosting include as much RAM and processing power as you want, complete isolation — so a neighboring website’s demise won’t bring down your own — and the best uptime and performance stats money can buy. And we’re not talking a boatload of money, either.

While dedicated servers are the priciest of the server types, they’re a dream when compared to the costs and headaches of hosting a website yourself. Below are a few top-recommended dedicated server plans:

5. InMotionHosting.com

InMotion Review

Monthly Starting Price $35.00

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  • Bare-metal or managed servers available
  • 1-on-1 time with a server administrator
  • 99.99% uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
  • Tier 1 network with redundant bandwidth
  • SSH root access and DDoS protection on all servers
  • Upgrade for cPanel, migration, and auto backups
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

PJ Fancher

PJ Fancher

PJ Fancher, Contributing Expert

PJ is a professional web developer with more than 20 years of experience. His background began with writing small web applications using Perl, PHP, and MySQL in 1998. He has well-rounded experience with all aspects of web development, from server and database configuration to scripting, styling, design, and SEO.

(HostingAdvice.com): InMotion Hosting offers amazingly fast and reliable dedicated hosting on market-leading hardware — making it an easy choice for anyone seeking a premium dedicated server host. From free SSDs to a fanatical support team, InMotion has all the bases covered for both small-scale and large-scale operations. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
7 minutes 1 TB SSD – 3.2 TB SSD 12 – 32 cores 192 GB DDR4 – 512 GB DDR4

6. Bluehost.com

Bluehost Review

Monthly Starting Price $141.19

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  • Instant provisioning for all Bluehost server plans
  • Minimum 3 dedicated IP addresses
  • Modern hardware, built and maintained in house
  • 24/7 expedited support from a dedicated team
  • Sign up to save 25% on your first term
  • Get started on Bluehost now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Ryan Frankel

Ryan Frankel

Ryan Frankel, CTO and Contributing Expert

Ryan began developing websites in the late ’90s and has personally tested just about every web host and cloud platform worth trying on the market today. With a masters degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida, he leverages his extensive knowledge of hardware, software, and their engineering relationship to inform HostingAdvice readers of the technical implications of their hosting choices. Ryan’s subject matter expertise includes, but is not limited to, WordPress, cloud infrastructure management, product UI/UX design, and popular web development languages such as JavaScript and PHP.

(HostingAdvice.com): Built on modern technology, with a minimum of four CPU cores per dedicated server, Bluehost offers reliable and flexible dedicated hosting options at an extremely reasonable price. We continually praise the company’s shared hosting options for having fantastic hardware and a great management console, and the brand’s dedicated server offerings are no different. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
8 minutes 500 GB – 1 TB (RAID-1) 4 cores, 4 – 8 threads 4 GB – 16 GB

7. LiquidWeb.com

Liquid Web Review

Monthly Starting Price $44.00

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  • Linux or Windows with choice of 3 control panels
  • 100% network and power uptime guarantees
  • Custom configurations and instant provisioning
  • Auto-migrations, backups, and real-time monitoring
  • Block/object storage and load balancer add-ons
  • Get started on Liquid Web now.
Our Expert’s Review ★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson, Contributing Expert

Alexandra is a web marketer, Agile Product Owner, and die-hard wordsmith who’s contributed to HostingAdvice, InMotion Hosting, HostGator, and other prominent hosting and technology blogs, as well as Forbes. She has a master’s degree in information technology from Virginia Tech and more than 10 years of experience building websites, advising on web and mobile app design, and crafting content that engages and converts. Her primary subject matter expertise spans WordPress, UX design, Agile project management, and, of course, web hosting.

(HostingAdvice.com): Liquid Web’s strong suit is managed dedicated server hosting. The company owns and operates five state-of-the-art datacenters in the US and Europe works tirelessly to build and maintain custom solutions for added performance and security. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
8 minutes 480 GB SSD – 960 GB SSD (+ 2 TB SATA) 4 – 16 cores 16 GB – 64 GB

Even though dedicated servers are the priciest of the bunch, the amount of money you’ll save compared to hosting your own server is astounding. You will also enjoy the same control and flexibility while having the capable support and technical assistance of your web hosting provider on your side the entire time.

More dedicated server providers »

Learning How to Host a Website From Home Is Fun But Impractical

Although we covered the steps to setting up a good website hosting system on both Windows and Linux, I’d like to remind everyone that self-hosting is ultimately not practical for any serious project. While we can hope this will become more feasible in the future, it’s not the case as of late.

Hosting your own website is akin to those who can build their own PC or reassemble an engine. Those achievements are quite possible for seasoned pros and perhaps even highly motivated beginners — but the end results often can’t stack up in the long run with the commercially built counterparts.

The hosting providers we featured at the beginning of the article have been in the industry for decades and simply know how to host websites at scale.

Fun fact: There are folks working on distributed content-serving ideas. Projects like IPFS could allow people to create decentralized content hosting networks — eventually. The internet keeps surprising us, so who knows what the future of hosting holds! Follow us to stay up to date with the industry and all its twists and turns.

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