Different Types of Website Hosting

Choosing web hosting can be very confusing. Especially when they have lots of different types of web hosting plans. It also depends on what type of website you want to create and what type of requirements your site needs. Web hosting can be free, shared or dedicated.

The different types of web hosting:

1. Free Website Hosting

There are lots of hosting companies and ISP (internet service providers) that provide free web hosting. This is not recommended if you have a business online or you have a high traffic website.

Free web hosting is ideal for small very low traffic websites.

The catch however is that you get a subdomain e.g. www.yourwebsitefreehosted.com/(your website name). So as you can see that you actually promote that website brand and not your own. This also don't look very professional if you plan to make serious business online.

Pros	Cons
Free. No cost involved	Subdomain name
Good for personal or hobby site	Advertising (Popups, banner ads etc.)
	Limited support
	Limited database and limited options

2. Shared Website Hosting

I personally use shared hosting for all of my sites. Basically my sites are hosting with other sites on the same server. This makes it very affordable to get web hosting. The other webmasters don't know that your site is with theirs.

So your domain name will point to your website folder on that server with a unique IP address.

You get many options like cPanel that are very powerful to manage websites and also good technical support, because there are lots of other sites on the web server.

Pros	Cons
Low cost affordable	Sharing with other websites
Very good for small businesses	Limitation on web hosting space
Own domain name	Limited on website bandwidth
Support is very good	Security concer (Lots of other websites)

3. Dedicated Website Hosting

With dedicated website hosting the web server will only host your website(s). Basically the server is dedicated to only your sites. With shared hosting you share web server with other webmasters.

Dedicated web hosting is much more expensive than shared web hosting. With shared site hosting the cost is split between all the webmasters.

This hosting option is good for high traffic sites.

Pros	Cons
Your sites is alone on the web server	Very expensive
More disk space and resources	Requires specialised skills to manage
Good for bigger businesses
Lots of email accounts

4. Virtual Dedicated Website Hosting

This solution is a cheaper version of dedicated website hosting. The web hosting company can put lots of VM virtual servers on one web server.

When you login to your VM server then it looks like you have your own dedicated web server.

Pros	Cons
Low cost affordable	Technical expertise to manage
Very good for small businesses
Own domain name
You can have more than one VM on a server

5. Co-Location Managed Website Hosting

Collocated web hosting is when you put your own web server on a web hosting companies premises. The web host manages everything on your own server for you e.g. security updates, virus updates etc.

The web hosting companies have got better backup capabilities and also fibre optic cables and faster dedicated internet. The also have fire protection systems in place.

Pros	Cons
High Up-time	Very expensive
High Traffic Bandwidth	Requires high technical skills to manage
Security is good
Lots of sofware options
Good for bigger businesses

Get Paid web hosting here

It is a good idea to buy both your domain name and web hosting at one place. Lots of web hosting companies give you a FREE domain name when you sign up for web hosting. Get both below

Free domain name (.com) with annual web hosting. 99.99% Unix® uptime

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