Posted by on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 9:15 pm.
Web Hosting Companies in nature can often be quite unhelpful in offering advice on which web hosting package you should purchase, dependent on the size and nature of your own website design.
Using a Web Hosting service can be a seriously large financial investment, so this blog post aims to give sound guidance on the different types of web hosting packages that are commonly available, and what types of websites each are suited too. In particular, this article covers Shared, VPS and Dedicated Hosting.
If you’re a little unfamiliar with some of the terminology mentioned in this blog-post, check out the first part of this guide which comprises of a basic web hosting glossary.
Web Hosting Guide & Advice
Shared Hosting
Suitable For: Static Websites, Small Business Websites, Personal Blogs
Shared Hosting is often the cheapest method of getting your website online, and is essentially the entry-level service offered by Web Hosting companies.
By choosing a Shared Hosting package, your website will basically be located on a single server that is shared by a large quantity of other websites. To explain the possible pitfalls of Shared Hosting, think of a public bus service.
Using a public bus will likely get you to your destination, but a number of factors might end up causing you trouble. Your journey might be slow (Load Time), you may struggle to carry all of your baggage (Disk Space) and there may not be enough capacity for every passenger who tries to take the journey (Bandwidth).
Of course for smaller websites, Shared Hosting is absolutely fine and rarely causes a problem.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
Suitable For: Dynamic Websites, Small eCommerce Stores, Community/Fansites
VPS Hosting can be considered as the ‘middle-of-the-road’ choice of Web Hosting packages. You’ll get all of the perks of a Dedicated Server e.g. large disk space/bandwidth allowance, multiple domain hosting, server control panel – but at a fraction of the cost.
How does it work? A Dedicated Server is split up into several large partitions, which is then shared amongst a few customers who self-manage each partition. In other words, you’ll own part of a server, meaning you have more resources available to you, suitable for hosting larger websites.
Virtual Private Server hosting can be similar to renting a house. You’ll get all the perks of having your own home, but you’ll never be able to decorate it to your exact specifications and have to rely on your landlord to solve a problem if any occur.
Just to reaffirm, VPS Hosting is perfect for websites that require that little extra resource, but are not looking to become the next Facebook, Amazon or well-known blog.
Dedicated Hosting
Suitable For: High-Traffic Websites, Multiple Website Hosting
Dedicated Hosting packages consist of your own private, self-managed web server which can be built and configured to your exact specifications. Essentially, they’re designed to support hosting a very large website, or many smaller ones, with ease.
Managing a Dedicated Server is no simple task and will require you to invest in IT Support resources (adding to the already high cost) or alternatively, you can brush up on the technical knowledge required yourself.
Skills needed include knowing how to access a server remotely via command line, setting up domain name servers and working with in-depth hosting configuration files. If all of that sounds like a challenge you’re up for, feel free to proceed.
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