Choosing the Right Type of Hosting

02.07.2019 2,563 18

Nick Galov

Choosing a hosting provider and a hosting package is often the first decision you have to make when creating a website. Your website has to be located somewhere, after all.

New website owners might be tempted to just go with whichever option they run into first or with whatever’s the cheapest. The problem here is that bad hosting can practically cripple a website.

Choosing a bad hosting provider or a hosting package that can’t support your website can lead to all kinds of performance and security issues. You wouldn’t be able to run a website at all, and you would eventually have to migrate everything to a new host, which is a pain in and of itself.

In simple terms, it really pays off to get hosting right from the get-go.

To help you with this, we have an insightful infographic by HostingTribunal.com. It covers the most important facts and statistics concerning web hosting, and it can really help you understand the world of hosting better.

We’ll outline one of the most important points here – the different types of web hosting. It is crucial to know these so you can choose the one that fits your website.

Probably the most popular option for first-timers, hobbyists, or just owners of smaller websites is shared hosting. As the name suggests, it lets you share a server with a number of other people.

Shared hosting is extremely cheap and sometimes costs only $10/year. Since anyone can afford it, it’s a perfect choice for those who want to dip their toes into the waters of website ownership.

The drawback, however, is that shared hosting can rarely support larger websites with lots of traffic. Also, you have far less control over the server, as you’re not the only one using it.

For those who need more control and plenty of server resources, there’s dedicated hosting. This means you’re renting out an entire server for your own needs.

We’ve already mentioned the benefits – more control and more resources to run your website. Obviously, this comes at a far steeper price.

Also, there’s always the possibility that not even the dedicated server has the right amount of resources for you. If you make a mistake when purchasing dedicated hosting, the migration will be very costly and very unpleasant.

For those who want a compromise, there’s Virtual Private Server. This is technically still shared hosting, but your website is stored on a virtual machine within the shared server.

With this option, you get something similar to the control of dedicated hosting and a greater amount of resources than with shared hosting. It’s great for those whose needs have outgrown simple shared hosting but who don’t want to invest huge sums into dedicated hosting just yet.

Finally, cloud hosting is something of a newcomer to the group, but it’s powerful nevertheless. It is designed for flexibility, meaning you don’t have to settle for a fixed amount of storage or computing power.

You typically pay for the resources you spend, so you aren’t wasting any money. This is great for those who experience traffic spikes at certain times or who can’t predict their amount of traffic reliably.

Cloud hosting might be a bit too much for hosting a simple WordPress blog, but it can be a great resource for owners of larger websites. Just be mindful that getting the most of cloud hosting can be a bit complicated, so it’s best to have an expert manage everything.

That covers the four common types of web hosting. You can choose one of them according to yours and your website’s needs.

Of course, the infographic covers much more. If you want to learn more about hosting types, the web hosting industry, top hosting companies, and domain names, check it out just below.