Types of Hosting: Easy Guide with Pros and Cons

1. What is hosting?
2. Different types of hosting services
   1. Dedicated server
   2. Cloud server
   3. Shared hosting
   4. VPS hosting
3. How to choose from the types of hosting services?
4. Next steps
5. Concluding ideas

Sooner or later, almost every businessperson faces the need to use their own landing pages or sites. At this moment, more than ever, choosing a hosting where sites will be hosted becomes more important. Today we will try to concisely and simply figure out all the details related to the different types of hosting.

What is hosting?

In a very simple language, to place your site on the internet, it must be trivially “put” somewhere. That is, there should be a place where the site will be located; then, it needs the domain, and after that, this whole thing will be opened from the browser line. The web server acts as such a place, and hosting, in turn, is part of this place, which has a ready-made interface including all the necessary software for the sites.

Different types of hosting services

To not bother you with the classification, just remember the four basic web hosting types, which are the most common ones: Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud.

Dedicated server

A dedicated server is renting a physical machine with remote access. This is for big guys with serious projects and tons of traffic per day. They probably won’t read this article, and the newcomer doesn’t need it.

Pluses

• When you purchase it, you get the whole disk exclusively for your use. You may use 100% of space and 100% of the power.
• You have guaranteed protection against viruses and hacker attacks: copies of the OS are usually hosted on other servers, so recovery will not take much time.
• You configure its operation "for yourself" using all its capacity.

Minuses

• Price.

Cloud server

There is also another even more exclusive type, which includes virtual machines in the cloud. In this case, physical servers are united into a cluster, and storage systems into a data storage network (SAN). It can be private or public. The former one is more expensive but is better protected and gives wide opportunities for personal administration and control over functioning. Public cloud is used by several clients, thus it has price advantages.

Pluses

• This type is the fastest, scalable and the most efficient.

Minuses

• Top price.

However, for landings and pre-landing pages, individual and business people most often choose from the two remaining options.

Shared hosting

It is the easiest and cheapest option from all types of website hosting. You are given a place on the server. It's like you have your own bed and a couple of square meters of your own space to place all your inventory in a hostel.

Pluses

• For a beginner, this type is ideal to place your page under your domain. In addition, this type usually has a completely ready-to-use interface, which does not require complex manipulations and knowledge of system administration, which greatly simplifies the work.
• Creating databases, the email client, file manager, and other tools are carried out in a couple of clicks, in a rendered and understandable interface.
• Cheap price. Some suppliers even have a trial period or return of the costs policy, so you can test the system and see if this variant suits you, which is excellent for a beginner.
• Easy to use. It prevents you from mastering control panels. Also, you get all the necessary set of utilities for configuration, creating databases, working with domains, and so on.

Minuses

• You may encounter problems with loading and site efficacy with large volumes of incoming traffic. In some cases, this can even lead to the appearance of visible errors for users trying to visit your page. Also, the traffic of your “neighbors” may affect yours.
• Privacy. There is a practice when the supplier issues one IP to several users. Alternatively, your hosting will have IP, which was previously used in the system by another client. If such an IP has already been flagged previously by Google or Facebook, then you can immediately get a ban or banal moderation without getting started.
• Tariff Limits. Tariffs are usually measured by the number of sites and the domain that can be deployed.

VPS hosting

VPS emulates the operation of a real physical server (hardware). Here you have both root access and the ability to install your OS along with software. It uses virtual servers that operate on the physical one, but each has its own IP and does not depend on its “neighbors” in hardware and loads.

Pluses

• The site will load much faster than using the shared option.
• Complete control. When purchasing VPS, you get root or administrator access, and now it's possible to adjust it to the needs of a particular project, including installing any extra utilities and reinstalling the OS if necessary.
• Minimum work limitations. The number of created sites, databases, domain zones and users is limited only by the resources of your server.

Minuses

• You should be technical savvy. When buying a VPS, if you have a clean distribution kit installed, all you get is access data to a server of the form: IP, login, password. Further, everything will have to be done through the admin panel or file manager, where you can’t install any software without certain skills and knowledge. You need to take a system administrator into a team or learn a basic course yourself.
  Of course, there are various server administration panels for simplified operation, such as cPanel, but you'll have to purchase them and not all will have a full range of options. The control panels can be partially attributed to the minuses because they can interfere with the installation or conflict with self-hosted trackers or other software.
• Price. Of course, a VPS server is more expensive than the previous type, although the best option starts from $10.

How to choose from the types of hosting services?

If you are far from being a technical savvy, don’t have much traffic, and you just want to load personal or landing pages under your domains, then take shared hosting. This option is quite enough for all your needs. Nice interface, quick access to support, minimum costs, and other stuff will not take you extra time and effort when loading your own site.

If you are an experienced person who is able to distribute the landing page themselves and install a couple of scripts there, there will be enough traffic and the project can be classified as one with elevated demands for data security and privacy, it is better to take a VPS server.

VPS server will better cope with the load, provide proper security and give full control in operation. Also, VPS servers are suitable in cases where you plan to install a self-hosted tracker. Just do not forget that you need a technical base since you will have to work either through the file manager or through a special control panel.

All types can be equally good for varying types of tasks. Before buying a hosting, decide which type is more suitable for your situation. Then determine the functions and software that must be installed to perform all tasks. Once you know all the answers, you can easily find a worthy supplier that meets all your requirements. And given the presence of the trial period, you can safely start with the development of shared hosting, and then transfer to more powerful and sophisticated VPS or dedicated servers.

Next steps

As you see, things are not as complicated as they seem to be, though going into all these issues requires some time and knowledge in technology, making some analysis, and finding the needed information. The next thing what you should do after finding all you need about types of hosting is to figure out what exactly the suppliers offer, what tools, components, and service level they have.

Usually, the basic points that you'll need to know is the level of support department, whether the suppliers have some free attributes, like SSLs or domain name, or else, what is the trial period if they have one, and what level of security and guarantees the suppliers give. The other information that will be more than necessary is the monthly price. Notably, most of the suppliers offer to purchase the tariff packs on a yearly or half-yearly basis, so be ready for the sum for six-twelve months. It would be better if you get the subscription form a reputable and tested by other users company. If you want to know more about the suppliers, view this article discussing best web hosting for small business. It will guide you through several good ones, their main perks, prices, and technical components.

Concluding ideas

Modern living requires online representation, and any business is unimaginable without the latter one. All the issues with site building, hosting, and so on may seem challenging, but they are worth it. At least now you are ready to select the better variant of hosting type for your goals. So, be prepared for the great advantages and success that expect you with maintaining a site, which will definitely boost your planned or existing business or creative goals.

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