Ultimate Web Hosting Detailed Guide On Types Of Website Hosting And Which Is Best

hosting-for-your-website
Ultimate Web Hosting Detailed Guide On Types Of Website Hosting And Which Is Best

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This is the most detailed guide on web hosting services and types you must know before buying hosting for your business.

Are you feeling a little confused by different types of website management services and web hosting plans? As your online business grows, your web hosting requirements will increase and become more complicated. Free & cheap web hosting plans may have been fine in your first six months, but if your website is too slow, you may need to start looking at beefing up your web server.

In this post, I have collected important information for you that will help you in order to plan & host your own website successfully.

What is Web Hosting?

In Simple words: Web Hosting is a place where individual organizations place their websites. Normally when we talk about web hosting, it means an organization that provides space on a server to host the files for your website, as well as provide the internet connectivity so that other computers can access to the files on your website.

Simple?

I guess it’s not clear unless you are well aware that your website is actually a collection of various computer files like HTML files, Videos, images, etc. that are interlinked together. To put your website on the web  & share these files, a supercomputer (Which we call it a server) with a high speed internet connection is required.  Web hosting is a big industry, nearby billion of websites currently online & millions of people across the globe getting into this new world.

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Free Hosting has its limitations, It is free of cost because the host makes money in some other way- usually by filling your site with many advertisements or pushing you to buy some other services.

Generally, there are 5 different types of Web Hosting. While all types of hosting servers will act as a storage center for your website, they vary in the amount of storage capacity, technical knowledge requirements, control, reliability & control.web-hosting-servers

  1. Shared Server Hosting: It is the most common & cost-effective means to get your website up & running. Shared  Hosting can cost less than $ 10 Per month for much space & bandwidth to put up a modest eCommerce or international site.  In a shared server hosting, your website shared space with the other websites on the same server.  As the cost of Server hosting is extremely low, most of the websites with moderate traffic levels running standard software are hosted in this type of server.

 Advantages of shared Server Hosting:

  • Cost-effectiveness/less cost
  • Ability to access own domain & Email
  • Better customer support
  • The requirement of minimum technical knowledge to set it up 

The disadvantage of Shared Server Hosting:

  • No root access, limited ability to handle extremely high traffic levels
  • It’s less secure as the hosting space is shareable with other sites on the same server
  • Site performance can be affected by other websites running on the same server 
  1. Dedicated Web Server Hosting: When you have a dedicated server, it means you are renting one physical server from a web hosting company. Generally dedicated servers are priced from $ 100 & up. But if you are interested in a dedicated server, you should consider the costs of hiring a system administrator to take care of the technical details.

Advantage of Dedicated Server Hosting:

  • Use of multiple domain names, hosting of additional websites
  • Complete administrative control
  • Unlimited software & Applications support
  • Powerful database support
  • Email solutions

Disadvantages of Dedicated Server Hosting:

  • It needs highly-skilled resources, such as a dedicated system administrator
  • It is high in cost because of its exclusivity
  • The user is responsible for security, maintenance issues 
  1. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting: VPS hosting is shared hosting that acts as a dedicated one. Basically, VPS hosting divides a server into many virtual servers, where each website looks like it’s hosted on its personal dedicated server, but the fact is that it shares a server with other users.

Advantages of VPS Server Hosting:

  • Better Security
  • Better Administrative control
  • Root Access to the user’s own virtual space 

The disadvantage of VPS Server Hosting:

  • There’s limited ability to handle high traffic levels
  • Website performance can be affected by the other sites

Types-of-servers4. Cloud Hosting: Cloud Based Hosting refers to a new hosting technology that allows hundreds of individual servers to work together so that it looks like one giant server. Cloud hosting follows the pay-as-you-go approach & bill users on total consumption.

Cloud-Servers

Advantages of the Cloud Based Web Hosting:

  • High Traffic can be managed
  • It nullifies hardware costs
  • There’s no need to hire skilled IT resources for maintenance

The disadvantage of the Cloud Based Web Hosting;

  • Cloud-Hosting providers generally do not offer root access, which is needed to amend server settings to install the software. 

5. Collocated Hosting Server: Collocated means Co-Location. It is about your own server but is located at a different place. It provides power, cooling, physical security & an internet uplink. This means you’re responsible for your own server software. Also, the business is totally responsible for its own data storage, backup system & server software. In any case, if the hardware fails, then it’s business responsibility to replace or repair it to get the server up & running.

Advantages of Collocated Hosting Servers:

  • Better security
  • Good Bandwidth
  • Unlimited software options

Disadvantages of Collocated Hosting Servers:

  • Highly Expensive
  • Requires skilled resources
  • Difficult to debug & configure

hosting-for-your-website

Which Hosting to Go For?

Once you know what features you need for your website, what type of web hosting you want, it is time to find the best company to provide that hosting. A best web hosting company will:

  • Guard servers against physical access by any intruders
  • Guarantee that their servers are up 99% of the time
  • Not to add any type of advertisements to your site
  • Provides 24*7 customer support & consult with you about your needs at no extra cost.

Once you have selected the right web host & hosting plan for your website, you can focus on your business & simply let your site work for you.

If you are a UK based local business we do recommend UK business web hosting services and for London based businesses, please read London server hosting advantages.

Author Profile

Fernando BiZ
The Founder & CEO of ClickDo Ltd. Writes about digital marketing and SEO for local businesses in International corporation. You can read more on OM HQ blog for more of my writings.
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