Between so many options of web hosting company, you probably don’t have hard time choosing the right one for your website. For you who are internet beginners, choosing a type of hosting to be used on your website can lead to a headache. There are several types of hosting but now we are going to discuss 4 of them. Once you understand these types of hosting, you will be in a better position to choose the one that best meets your needs.

Types of hosting:

Free and Paid Shared Hosting

You probably have across these types of hosting many times. The word ‘Free’ may sound very tempting but you’d better not to pick this type. Free services can damage your online business, as they make their money by intrusive pop-ups and advertising, over which you have no control. Meanwhile, share hosting means that you shares server space with many other website owner within the same web hosting company. It’s also known as virtual hosting, since more than one domain can share the same ip address. Think of it as a block of apartments, where each individual tenant has their own little corner of the main street address. Due to this condition, your website may experience slower response times and occasionally server failure if your online neighbors are running particularly heavy programs.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is the next step up, like moving out of an apartment block to your own house.  This is a one server, one client system, so you don’t have to share server space with other users.  You also have complete control over the server that you’re leasing, so you can install your own software and enjoy greater control over the services you run.  It is, of course, much more expensive than shared hosting.

Co-Location Hosting

This is similar to dedicated hosting, but it’s more like renting a house than outright home ownership.  Under this type of hosting system, you only pay for the space you’re actually using, rather than the entire server.  This takes away a lot of responsibility for management of the hardware and consequently a lot of the worry.  It is accordingly a cheaper version of dedicated hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Server and Virtual Private Server Hosting

This is really two different ways of saying the same thing – one server divided into several partitions, with each partition being dedicated to a single client.  To all intents and purposes, each client has their own dedicated server, hence the expression “virtual” server.  This is like leasing your own luxury apartment.  You can do what you like within the confines of your own virtual server, adding in software and customized services, and even rebooting it like a separate physical server if required.

In the end, the type of hosting you require will depend on the type of online business or website that you want to run, as well as the size of your budget.  If you don’t need a lot of space, and if control isn’t an issue, then shared hosting will be fine.  If you’re a larger business, then co-location or virtual dedication should be considered.  Finally, if money is no object and full control is important to the success of your business, you should consider the full dedicated server option.