Types of web hosting – Find the right hosting for your website

So you’re ready to build your own website but have no idea what type of web hosting you’ll need. Not to worry, by the time you finish reading this article you’ll have a much better idea of what the right type of web hosting is for your website.

Sure there are thousands of different web hosting companies to choose from but this article will not focus on companies but rather types of hosting available and what type of websites go with what type of web hosting.

Let’s start off with the most common type of hosting.

Shared hosting

When you’re out surfing the web probably 95% of the websites you visit are being served to you through a shared hosting server. All that really means is rather than only one website being hosted on a server the web hosting company has sections of their server to host hundreds of websites per Web server.

Now for the consumer there are many benefits that come along with shared hosting such as:

1. You’ll be paying a much cheaper price per month for hosting fees.
2. Shared web hosting almost always comes packaged with the most popular scripts and platforms available.
3. No need to learn server architecture or new scripting languages, perfect for the beginner.

The only thing you’re going to have to know before choosing a web hosting company and signing up for a shared hosting account is to you need a Windows shared hosting account or a UNIX based account.

Linux hosting

Linux-based shared hosting is by far the most popular of the two different types of shared hosting options, primarily because most servers run on a UNIX-based software which is open source(this means free).

This is the type of web hosting account your want to sign up with unless you are in need of ASP.net hosting, in that case you’ll want to choose a Windows-based hosting solution.

Windows hosting

Windows hosting normally costs a tad bit more than a UNIX-based basically because the hosting company will have to cover the licensing fees for using a Microsoft product. For the most part very few people will even consider using the ASP.net structure for their website and if they do need it then they won’t be reading this article.

E-commerce hosting

Do you want to sell your own products online, if so then you’ll want to look for an e-commerce hosting solution. The best way to think of an e-commerce hosting account is basically a shared hosting account on steroids. These types of accounts normally allow you to choose between several different shopping carts along with giving you the ability to use their shared SSL or even install your own SSL that you purchased.

When choosing a new e-commerce web hosting package you’ll want to make sure that the shopping carts offered allow for all different types of payment gateways.

Virtual private server

We’ve come to our favorite section virtual private servers. You can think of a virtual private server or a VPS as kind of a cross between a dedicated server and a shared hosting account. Basically what the web hosting company does is split a dedicated server up into several virtual servers.

If you’re asking yourself why would anybody want a virtual private server the answer is pretty simple. Resources and root access. Rather than having to share your server with hundreds of other websites you’ll only be sharing that server with as few other VPS’s, which means you’ll never have to worry about burning through resources or other websites burning through the servers resources causing your website to slow down.

Root access allows you to install custom applications and run server functions that are unavailable with a normal shared hosting account.

Besides what we listed above you will also be able to set up an unlimited amount of websites on your VPS, which means you’ll never have to sign up for another hosting service again that is unless you end up needing a dedicated server.

Reseller hosting

Now for those of you who want to start your own web hosting company you can achieve this for a very reasonable price by signing up for a reseller account.

The best way to explain a reseller hosting is to think of it as a cross between a virtual private server and a dedicated server. Reseller hosting gives you all the same features and access as a VPS along with a few more specialized software and services that allow you to bill clients and assign different hosting packages based on price.

Dedicated server

A dedicated server is like the granddaddy of them all. These are usually purchased by large corporations or extremely popular high-traffic websites. I guess what we’re trying to say is if you need a dedicated server then you should really put their yourself for a lot of learning or get ready for the expense of hiring a dedicated IT tech.

Dedicated servers come in two different varieties, managed and self administered.

Managed dedicated servers

Now managed dedicated servers are a huge expense but you don’t have to worry about running the server yourself or learning much about the server hardware or software side. Basically the company you purchase your managed dedicated server from will have techs who take care of the daily tasks of keeping a dedicated server up and running.

Most individuals will never have any use for a managed dedicated server.

Self administered dedicated servers

If you’re a tech savvy person and have a website that is too large for shared hosting or VPS or receives large volumes of traffic then a self administered dedicated server may be the best choice for you. Now these are not cheap, they usually cost 3 to 4 times more than the VPS per month.

Our suggestion to you is to spend your time looking for the right shared hosting account unless you really do need a more advanced type of web hosting package. Like we said before 95% of the websites you see out there are running on shared hosting account.