Which type of web hosting fits both your needs and your budget? Evaluate features and disadvantages of the many kinds of hosting below and find out which type is best for your business.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared web hosting is one of the most cost-efficient and easiest ways to host a website. The hosting provider will host your site on a server that also hosts the sites of several other clients. Your website will sit on its special slice, or partition, of the server. Because many clients share the space on the web host’s server, the cost is split between many customers who do not need to pay for the whole server individually.
This type of hosting is also attractive to low-maintenance users. The hosting provider’s servers will usually come preconfigured with its own software and system administration. Shared web hosting will come with server management and maintenance but may subject users to usage limits or allow a busy site on the server to slow down other sites. Power users will find that the lack of flexibility in shared web hosting to be a hindrance to their hosting wishes and plans. Check out the cheap web hosting guide at WebHostingSearch.com for more options.
Dedicated Web Hosting
If you would rather not share space on a server with others, dedicated web hosting is for you.
Dedicated web hosting involves having an entire server and its resources at your disposal, dedicated just for you. Power users who find the features of shared hosting lacking will find dedicated hosting to be a breath of fresh air.
Unlike shared hosting, clients will have full control of their servers and can tinker with all of the servers’ settings and configurations. However, with great power comes great responsibility: Clients must have someone with technical knowledge managing and maintaining the server. Dedicated servers is more costly compared to shared hosting.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Web Hosting
VPS hosting is the middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. Users will share servers but their sites are separated on the server through a process called virtualization which turns each partition into a virtual machine. Each virtual machine acts like its own server and has its own resources. VPS hosting isn’t for penny-pinchers but is cheaper than dedicated hosting because of fewer devoted resources.
Due to the nature of virtualization, VPS can become very complicated and is only suitable for users who have the technical skill in maintaining a virtual private server. Systems may be virtualized, paravirtualized, or hybrid paravirtualized. Clients using VPS hosting are afforded many of the same freedoms and resources that dedicated hosting providers offer.
Green Web Hosting
For those concerned about the environment, love Mother Earth, and exude eco-friendliness, green web hosting is an excellent option.
While traditional web hosting companies will power their servers with electricity from nonrenewable energies and fossil fuels, green web hosts use alternative and renewable energies like wind and solar power. Some eccentric and newer green web hosts are even powered by geothermal or biogas energy.
Pricing for green web hosts varies greatly, but can be competitive with traditional web hosting. The offerings of each green web hosting provider are quite different. Instead of providing servers that are powered by green sources of electricity, some hosts will offer carbon offsetting or will even plant trees in your name. When researching for a green web host provider, make sure the actions of the green host you end up choosing match your environmentally friendly cause.
Reseller Web Hosting
Using reseller web hosting is much like purchasing through a middleman who bought his or her goods from a wholesaler and has subsequently flipped them to you. With reseller hosting, the reseller has purchased hard drive space and bandwidth from larger hosts and resells them to third parties like you. Typically the reseller will not resell or rent an entire server.
Reseller hosting is usually a feature provided by web designers or web developer firms. This kind of hosting is relatively cheap but will certainly be limited in computing ability, memory, bandwidth, and software. Whatever hosting power you are given will first be limited by the larger hosting provider and next by the reseller. The level of technical knowledge needed to host with a reseller is about equivalent to the know-how required for shared hosting.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing differs from all other forms of hosting listed above in that what is hosted is not solely content but computing as a service.
Regular hosting usually provides static data like text and photographs to Internet users. Cloud computer involves pooling the resources of many servers in order to allow access to data, software, and services straight from Internet networks.
Cloud computing is commonly used to deliver dynamic applications to Internet users, who can access them from computer browsers and mobile devices alike.
Because of the costly and extensive nature of many servers powering “the cloud,” cloud computing is only limited to clients who need a way to push special kinds of products and services to end users.