Four Types of Web Hosting

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

If you are one of the many who have just finished setting up their website, then I’m sure you are now on the look out for a web hosting service to promote your site.  You basically have 4 options to choose from when considering a web hosting provider.  In this article, you will see the main differences of each service to help you decide.

Different types of web hosting

The four basic web hosting services are the following:  Free web hosting, shared web hosting, unmanaged dedicated web hosting and the managed dedicated web hosting.

The simplest and most basic you can avail of is the free web hosting service.  This is an option for personal sites that do not require a huge amount of bandwidth and storage.  This means you are anticipating light traffic in your site.  Free web hosting services offer minimal features and very little support or at times none at all for PHP, multiple site addresses, MySQL, and site statistics

Shared web hosting providers, as the name suggests, mean that you share the server with several other sites.  This service however is the most popular option.  This is because small businesses and even medium to large sites including professional sites find that shared web hosting is the solution they need.  They do not require the resources of an entire web server and they do not want to incur additional costs by purchasing and running one on their own.  Typically, the web hosting providers offer features that are made readily available to the users including larger bandwidth and memory capacity.  They also support, depending on the details of the package, MySQL, ASP or PHP and multiple e-mail addresses as compared to free hosting services.  But of course, you are faced with some security risks that go with sharing the server with several other sites.  This is a downside that you may want to keep in mind.

An unmanaged dedicated web hosting service means that you become your own server administrator.  Having a dedicated web hosting service is an option for sites who require more bandwidth, storage and specific features that free and shared web hosting providers cannot offer. Here you shall have the liberty to input as many databases and email addresses as you can create.  Dedicated servers usually have a 500 to 1,000 GB bandwidth capacity per month.   And should you require extra storage, you can always purchase an extra hard drive for the server.  However, if you are not familiar with the task of running your own server then you only have 2 other options.  One option is to try and learn to be a server administrator or move on to the next web hosting option below.

If you require the capabilities and features of a dedicated server but do not want to be hassled by having to run it on your own, then you go with a managed dedicated web hosting service.  Here you will have all the perks mentioned and get assistance available should anything go wrong.  Be sure however to be discriminating when choosing one.  

Prices and costs will of course vary depending on your reliability, security and support requirement you shall need