Web hosting is the process of renting space on a server that will store your website and allow you to make it available to internet users. It is therefore one of the most important parts of any successful website.
The number of web hosts out there can be overwhelming, but it’s worth taking the time to find a good provider for your business or personal needs. There are many different types of web hosting, so let’s explore these in more detail.
1. Shared Hosting
A shared web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service in which many websites are hosted from one web server. This is typically on a single computer somewhere but can be accomplished through virtualization as well.
This means that there are many customers on the same server and all have equal rights to resources, which can allow you to save up to 60% on your initial monthly cost by choosing this option over dedicated or VPS models.
You can think about this model like you would apartments or houses that are all in close proximity to one another. The landlord furnishes only the basics for everyone’s unit, and each resident pays less rent for their share of common living spaces than they would if they had their own dwelling with no other residents in it.
In contrast to dedicated hosting where the provider provides space and bandwidth exclusively to a customer, under this multi-tenant arrangement, customers get part of “someones else’s” space and bandwidth.
To continue our example, if ten other websites are also hosted on the same cluster as yours and each averages 1GBs in bandwidth per day – then at any given time you might only have about 10% available to actually do anything.
There’s also considerably less work for both the customers who make use of shared hosting and the company that provides it because it takes care of costs associated with building dedicated servers keeping them updated and running and otherwise providing any level of dedicated customer support.
All this translates into great savings for consumers in general while providing some degree of financial stability for companies in this space.
A shared web host service is therefore a relatively low-risk business model when it comes to inexpensive options for making sure your site has adequate bandwidth.
2. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
A VPS (virtual private server) allows you to have an isolated corner of the hosting company’s resources rather than just a slice. Not enough for your company’s needs? Add more slices, at any time, as your budget grows.
This flexibility gives companies the freedom and control they need to manage their business without worrying about IT infrastructure costs or availability.
In other words, it provides you with what feels like a dedicated server with all the same features and benefits but at a lower cost – it’s sort of hardware leasing meets software leasing.
3. Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller web hosting is a type of web hosting where you sell virtual private servers and services as an affiliate with shared hosting providers.
You share certain technical aspects with your clients, but your day-to-day client management duties are based on the agreements which you sign with them.
The clients usually pay your hosting provider for their service each month, while you get a commission from that deal.
On a large scale, reseller web hosting enables hosts to sell more products than they have available in-house to provide 24/7 user support and manage technical operations.
Reseller hostings offer developed tools that allow them to optimize their resources within their network infrastructure resources for cost-effectiveness.
There are also made available other options such as domain registrations, email accounts/servers, cloud servers which offer an expandable environment for storage needs such as backup or archiving all your clients’ databases.
4. Cloud-based Web Hosting
Cloud Web Hosting is a type of web hosting service that stores your site on multiple servers to avoid any single point of failure.
This means there’s greater uptime and the chance for downtime is slimmer than with regular hosting where only one server stores data.
Additionally, cloud-based websites can be accessed from anywhere in the world because they have an instance running in different geographic locations.
This ensures scalability and high availability for all hosted services at all times for clients around the world, whether their visitors are located next door or across the globe!
5. Managed Hosting
Managed web hosting is a type of web hosting where an outside company takes on the responsibility for supervising the day-to-day operations involved in owning and maintaining a web server, such as creating filesystems, developing and installing server applications, maintaining web servers, and working with databases.
There are many managed hosting providers who offer support services to improve reliability and to make management easier.
6. WordPress Hosting
WordPress Hosting, also known as Managed WordPress Hosting is the next generation of web hosting for WordPress sites.
Managed WordPress hosts take care of everything from domain registrations to security updates, so you can focus on creating content and building your business.
They also use best practices that lend themselves to performance optimization like caching and page speed improvements.
Not only does this save you time, but it also makes your site faster than un-managed or unmanaged WordPress providers since these tasks are out of date hands at times when a timely update should have been done already.
The result is a better experience for your visitors with fewer vulnerabilities and less downtime – all without breaking your budget to purchase expensive new equipment or hiring expensive employees.
7. Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated web hosting is when you host your own site and use a single, fixed server with a certain amount of bandwidth for the duration of your contract.
In other words, a Dedicated hosting account is set up for running only one website.
This means that the server will be optimized to support the needs of this particular site (or sites) because it has these individual websites as the primary use.
This type of hosting is generally more reliable than shared web hosting because it’s hosted on a private server that only hosts one website – so there’s no need to worry about running out of space.
Therefore, this obviously means Dedicated Web Hosting is perfect for businesses that have a large demand for bandwidth or storage space.
8. Colocation Web Hosting
Colocation web hosting provides a way for small and medium-sized businesses to save money on the cost of owning, designing, building, maintaining, and leasing data center space.
In contrast with cloud computing, colocation hosting allows an organization to purchase its own server(s) or equipment (such as routers or switches), monitor it yourself; maintain it yourself; network it together internally; back up your data periodically and test from time to time.
The organization might also have its own technicians administering security protocols such as antivirus software.
You rent rack space from a data center when you colocate. If the server’s hardware fails, you’re in charge of replacing it and getting it back online.
9. Self-hosting
Self Hosting is also known as Self-service Web Hosting means that customers can manage their own website’s data by themselves without the help of technical staff.
The customers can install web applications, operating systems, databases, and scripts to preserve their websites.
They also provide a server for them to utilize all the features from each type of services like email hosting and domain name management.
Moreover, self-service web hosting offers an extremely limited customer support system as they let customers create their own IT environment which includes being responsible for updating computers as well as providing backup solutions if something happens to go wrong with the server or at home.
It is totally recommended that you have some prior technical knowledge in order to set up your site correctly before opting for this model.
Conclusion
Professional tone: Web hosting is a costly endeavor, and it’s important to understand the different types of web hosting before you make your decision.
Shared web hosting allows one website on each server, so if multiple sites are hosted at once there may be performance issues.
VPS provides more power for running individual websites without slowing down other systems in use; this type of host typically offers more than enough resources for most small businesses’ needs.
Dedicated hosts offer greater security from potential hackers and viruses because they only have one customer site per account but can cost upwards of $100/month or even higher depending on the size of your business.
Cloud-based servers function similarly to shared services by allowing multiple customers onto a single system.
Managed hosts have a standby manager to take care of the technical aspects of your website thereby giving you time to focus on the business aspects of the website.