If you are planning to take your business online or already have a website, you must know that Web Hosting plays a significant role in launching your website. Currently, in the market, there are many brands each offering different features. All these brands are competing against each other for your website web hosting. With innumerable options available in the market, it can get overwhelming for website owners to choose a platform.
Not only that, there are different types of web hosting so naturally making a decision can get hard. If you are not familiar with all this, it can get hard to understand everything. But you need to know all the details about web hosting so choose the best fitting one for your online business. Nothing to worry about, you are at the right place at the right time. In this article, you will be finding out about all the information required regarding web hosting.
What is Web Hosting?
Before diving into the topic, one must know the basic information about Web Hosting. If you are running your business (website) on the internet it must have a host i.e., web hosting. The hosting will make the website accessible to people across the globe through the internet. Still, confused? This web hosting service has servers that store the information of your website which will allow others on the internet to view the content on your website. Simply put, you are paying web hosting services to store and protect the data of your website. These hosting servers store the information of thousands of websites and deliver the information to users on the internet to access simultaneously. As you already know there are different types of hosting services available such as
- Free hosting
- Dedicated hosting
- Shared hosting
- Reseller hosting
- Cloud-based hosting
- Virtual Private Server
- Self-service hosting
- Colocation hosting
- Managed WordPress hosting
- Cluster web hosting
Different types of web hostings
Free hosting
As the name suggests this web hosting service is free. You don’t have to pay anything to access their web hosting services. If you are a beginner and planning to start this is suggested for you. Most people use this hosting to create blogs. There are platforms like WordPress that allow you to create a website. However, the domain name will consist of the platform name (eg: blog.wordpress.com). Also, you will not be finding more selections in plugins, themes. Beyond the basic setup and features, if you want to upgrade your website or blog you must upgrade your hosting to the premium plan.
Dedicated hosting
With dedicated web hosting, you will be using the full server for your business. There is no doubt that this hosting is most secure and provides you with more freedom to make your website’s performance better. Another best part is, you can tailor it according to your specific needs. It allows you to configure the server and run the application of your choice. Whenever you are choosing a dedicated hosting server you must check whether the platform is offering the following features such as backup facilities, service monitoring, technical support, top-notch security, etc.
You can also tailor the security measures based on your requirements. However, dedicated hosting is more likely suitable for large businesses as they have websites and apps that need to be up and running all the time. For small businesses, these types of servers have more storage capacity than required. Since they are on a tight budget it is not that helpful for them to choose dedicated web hosting.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is where you will be sharing the web hosting servers with other websites. Well, it is quite similar to co-working space, where more than one business shares the space to run their business. Here you are sharing your server with other businesses who run their websites. This type of web hosting is perfect for people who are on tight budgets. Yes! Small businesses or businesses that have recently started. The number of servers hosted on a platform can be anywhere between 30 to several hundred. The users on this server will be sharing both the storage and resources of the server.
It is undoubtedly one of the most popular hosting types. Since the resources are shared among the users, there are restrictions such as the maximum number of websites you can host and the storage capacity you can use. But one thing that you must note is that it is not exactly suitable for all businesses. If the traffic of your website is high, it is suggested that you check out other alternative options. Since you will be sharing the space with many others you are vulnerable to security threats because of your neighbors.
Reseller hosting
Reseller web hosting is under which you will be able to sell different shared plans. With reseller plans, you can have control over the storage, billing, and RAM of your shared plan. It will provide you with full control over the plans you can offer your clients. This hosting plan is more likely used by web designers to keep a track of their clients. It usually offers users white label technical support, free templates, etc.
Cloud-based hosting
Cloud-based hosting will save all the data of your website on a network of servers. You can access it over the internet. This hosting links up hundreds of servers to one giant network over different geographical locations. So the users will have unlimited computing resources and storage access. The dedicated servers have limitations above which they cannot work. However, with cloud-based hosting all you have to do is add in a network and your performance will improve. Not all types of businesses can use this hosting as their data will be stored on the internet. However, there is no doubt that this plan is highly cost-effective.
Virtual private server
VPS offers the best features of both dedicated and shared hosting. With this server, the users will be sharing the space with other users similar to that of shared hosting. However, the host will provide each of the users with their virtual private server. So they will get their dedicated storage, processing resources, memory, etc. Simply put, they will not have any limitations on the usage. Another advantage with VPS is that, since it is a self-contained computing environment, your site’s performance will not be affected because of the other websites.
Self-service hosting
As the name suggests this is a hosting plan where the users can do it themselves. Yes! The users can buy the servers, install and configure the software. Well, one thing that they have to make sure of is that they have adequate power and cooling in the machine room. From bandwidth to data integrity there are many things that they should take care of.
Colocation hosting
Colocation hosting means the users will be renting rack space from a data center. The data center will only provide users with physical security, power, internet uplink, and cooling. Users have to bring their server hardware; they are responsible for the software of the server, backup procedures, and data storage. The users have to replace it in case of hardware failure too.
Managed WordPress hosting
WordPress has become one of the go-to web-building platforms. This has raised the popularity of wordpress. So most of the Web Hosting platforms are offering managed wordpress hosting. Under this hosting plan, the hosting platforms will keep the wordpress installation on your website up-to-date.
Cluster web hosting
Most people confuse cluster web hosting with cloud web hosting. But they are two entirely different web hosting. Cluster hosting is where a group of servers is operated together and acts as one big server. However, cluster charges hourly or monthly.
Wrapping up
As you have made it to the end of this article, you would have understood the differences between different types of hosting. So whenever you are choosing a hosting plan or provider make sure that it fits with your business requirements.
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