Popular Web Hosting Types

The website hosting business is the most important industry on the Internet, as it maintains every web page with server resources. Without the right kind of hosting, it is almost impractical to have your website or blog perform best, especially as you start to receive more daily visitors and update your site with content.

There are so many web hosts around now, that’s it hard to figure out what to look for among the different types of web hosting. On the low end, there’s shared hosting which is suitable for most customers, to high end dedicated web hosting which is used by some of the top online business on the web. Plus there are all types of web hosts in between, with their own sets of pros and cons. The best web hosting for you, depends on a variety of factors, so make sure you do your research before you choose.


Shared Web Hosting (Personal Website and Blogs):

Shared web hosting, or personal hosting, is a sort of hosting in which a single web server is shared between dozens to hundreds of webmasters all together, operating thousands of sites.

Most shared hosting plans contain countless features that can be accessed due to the shared hosting environment. As a shared hosting plan holder, you will receive access to a small portion of the web server, which can be used to host as many of your sites as you'd like. When you use shared hosting, you basically are sharing bandwidth, disk space, and other resources with other customers on your web host. These types of web hosting plans are very easy to use and the price can be quite reasonable. You will usually get access to an easy to use website control panel like CPanel which makes managing your hosting very simple. This makes shared hosting the best web hosting solution for someone who wants to run a personal blog or a low to medium traffic site.

If you have not so far purchased a web hosting plan and you are looking for a place to start, then you may want to think about shared web hosting for your personal site needs.

VPS Web Hosting (Business and Ecommerce Websites):

VPS hosting is also known as a virtual private server hosting, and it’s a very popular web hosting solution for someone who wants to move a step above shared hosting. VPS web hosting is particularly designed for business oriented webmasters in need of a more broad solution for various websites that are continuously increasing.

VPS hosting is equal to shared website hosting in that you will be sharing a web server with other website owners. The way VPS hosting works, it basically partitions a single physical server so it appears as multiple servers. This process is known as virtualization and it basically gives you your own dedicated server to host on. This means you will get quite a bit more resources, performance and security over your typical shared hosting plan. Cloud VPS hosting uses this perception, but widen out over various servers at the same time to build a very powerful network of resources that can be accessed by your web sites. Of course you pay more then for shared hosting, but it still cost much less then investing in your own dedicated server.

Dedicated Server Hosting (Enterprise Website and Large Portals):

Dedicated web hosting bears its name because you lease your own dedicated server. With dedicated hosting, your website have full access and control to the server and you no longer have to worry about competing with other customers.

As you do not have to share the web server, it is competent of handling so many more functions at the same time. You can usually install your own OS, and install whatever software and security applications you need. Dedicated hosting does require a certain level of authority to be able to maintain and direct your server. Still, if you are running a highly trafficed website, a dedicated web host is usually the only way to go. It’s also quite a bit more expensive then Shared and VPS hosting solutions.