Table of Contents
Popular Types of Web Hosting Services
Do you need a home for your website to host it online but are distracted by the various types of web hosting services recommended by different companies? If yes, then you are reading a perfect blog.
There are thousands of Internet Service Provider companies which provide Web Hosting Services. Even the famous search engine Google displays about 26,00,00,000 results for the keyword “Buy Web Hosting”.
I know you might be really confused because of all these different terms, But No need to worry, because you’re not the only one who is confused, even experienced web developers might also get confused because there are so many varieties available. All Web Hosting name looks identical but they aren’t identical actually. So today in this article we will clear all your doubts about choosing a perfect web hosting for your website type.
So my friend are you ready? Then let’s get started.
What is Web Hosting?
In simple term, Web Hosting is just a remote computer where all of your files including media and codes are stored. This remote computer is technically called a Server.
There is a famous meme for this situation, I have shared below.
” There is no cloud it’s just some else’s computer.”
However, a Web Server more many times effective and efficient than your laptop or personal computer. Usually, It uses Linux as the operating system (Windows and others are also available) and consists of CPU, RAM, SSD and other hardware to handle hundreds and hundreds of people at once.
Server Owner setups mandatory features and install additional features like control panel, virus scanner, support, email service and management, then he rents it out to end users like web developers, web development companies and freelancers.
i.e – You buy an apartment and rent it out to many students and earn money from it.
Understood? Let’s dive deeper into Types of Web Servers.
What Are The Different Types of Web Hosting Services?
Web Hosting services are categorized based on what type of configuration and features they provide. These Categories are based on Hardware, Software, Support or the Management.
Most Common Type Of Web Hosting Services are Shared, VPS and Dedicated Server, Complete types are listed as follows.
- Free Web Hosting
- Shared Hosting
- Reseller Hosting
- Managed Web Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- Colocation Hosting
1. Free Web Hosting – Mostly For Students
It’s a perfect choice for a student who is learning things and doesn’t want to spend on web hosting as He/She doesn’t know much about it. It’s perfect for learning, but not recommended for production level usage. This type of setup is just like Shared Hosting but it’s planned free as it provides very low resources and often found very slow in comparison to others. This is used as a marketing strategy by Hosting companies to convert users into premium later.
GoogieHost is one of the best free hosting in India which is fully loaded with cPanel and other important features.
You can also use free web services like WordPress or Blogger which allows you to create your own website free of cost on their subdomain. WordPress and Blogger are widely used by Bloggers to showcase their content online without spending a single Paisa.
Your site may experience many technical difficulties if you use free hosting for production websites. Most of the Free Hosting Service does not provide customer support, they are likely to rely on support forums rather than traditional support ticket system.
2. Shared Web Hosting – Best for Beginners and Small Sites
Just like its name Shared Web Hosting stands for a setup where multiple websites are hosted on the single web server, sharing all the resources like RAM, Processor, Disk Space etc. It’s very affordable in terms of pricing as it starts at only $1 which is hardly 70 INR.
People prefer shared hosting when they are not likely to get a ton of traffic in the initial phase of starting a website. It’s ideal for students, freelancers, small business websites etc.
I personally use Linux Shared Hosting by ManticLabs, the basic plan starts with just 99 INR which includes backup, antivirus, antispam, email drag and drop web builder etc. They offer 99.9% uptime and 24*7 on-call premium support to every client.
3. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
It’s widely used web hosting type, But it’s more reliable than the shared hosting service. It’s still shared but consists of multiple web servers. It provides a high level of customization like you can choose your own Operating System, Server Panel, Other software too. In Shared Hosting you share both hardware and software while in VPS Hosting you only share a portion of hardware.
Most of the VPS hosting packages monthly rental starts from $5. The pricing is based often based on the guaranteed Disk Space, CPU and RAM you will get.
Digital Ocean is one of the best option for VPS Hosting at an affordable rate. Many Hosting companies provide managed VPS hosting which is comparatively priced a bit higher than unmanaged VPS hosting.
4. Dedicated Server
It’s the top level of a server if you have a dedicated server that means you really have a Server! Yes, It means you have a dedicated physical server with full access from the data centre company. You don’t share any resources like hardware or software with anyone else. It’s like VPS with full root access and not sharing the hardware resources.
It’s used for websites with a large number of active users, Cost starts from around 100$ but you need to consider other costs like control panel, other software licence and system admin charges too.
5.Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller Hosting service is the same as the Shared Hosting account, But it comes with the extra great features or tools which helps to you to resell the hosting space. These packages come with the better features of Technical Control also via the Web Host Manager Control which helps the clients with some of the extra great features.
These features involve the Templates of free websites, Hosting Company will handle all your technical issues and another feature is, It provides private name Servers. Mostly Reseller hosting packages start from the $15 to $60, Depending on the features and the limit of the resources.
If you are planning for web hosting with the selling purpose then Reseller Hosting is the perfect choice for you. Otherwise, if you are on the starting phase of your business then mentioned as earlier, Shared Web Hosting is the best choice for you.
6.Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is mostly the same as VPS hosting. In the cloud hosting hundreds of Different servers work together so it seems like a one great cloud server. In Cloud hosting physical server dynamically convert into the whole virtual machine. It means it takes the bulk of the servers and combines them into a giant Virtual machine.
The main advantage of cloud web hosting is If you get a large amount of unusual traffic on your website then Your hosting plan will handle that stuff. Your cloud web hosting plan will manage the whole traffic. Well, this is the important thing, that if your site is gaining much traffic then it is the time to move into the Cloud hosting package from the shared hosting plan or any other plans.
one of the biggest advantages of it is, Cloud hosting provides a large amount of scalability than the traditional VPS System and it is also efficient at Protecting your site against the Distributed Denial Service of Attack(DDoS). This type of attack is widely used to bring your website down, For crashing your site or for the malicious reasons as well. With this Cloud Based hosting websites, the whole network is under your control and due to this, it will able to handle all types of attacks than a single physical Server.
There are several cloud-based Hosting Services in India and it provides this service as the cost structure of it varies from sites-to-sites. Suppose your site is gaining much traffic then to handle that traffic, your Cloud-based plan can take extra charges for that. Although, Google is also providing free cloud hosting credit worth $300 for a year. Google Cloud is one of the best cloud hosting service followed by Amazon’s AWS(Amazon Web Services), also Microsoft’s cloud service Azure and Alibaba’s cloud computing service are also on the queue.
7.Managed Web Hosting
A fully Managed VPS Server is the server that is set up, arranged, installed, updates, verified, examined by a hosting specialist. These specialists take responsibilities that are also called Systems Admins. Reputed managed web hosting service has a lot of specialists to manage the server. It requires to be updated Consistently for the security purpose. Whatever issues will be there on your site, your hosting provider will deal with the issues and that’s why this service is called managed web hosting service.
Nowadays, As a big Web Building platform, WordPress is gaining much popularity. So it is worth to mention it here. These are provided by many web hosting providers which are known as “Managed WordPress Hosting”
Managed WordPress Hosting is a service in which the provider will keep your installation up-to-date which can help you to protect your site from the security attacks. They also include much greater features like scalability, updates, daily backups and many more.
This is not as expansive as shared web hosting or any other web service hosting, as this is the great choice for the start-up business as well as for already established business to use the managed WordPress platform.
8.Colocation Hosting
When your website contains a large amount of data or supposes you owned a business and there is a need to store a large amount of data and you need more resources so that you can’t buy a whole Data centre but you can buy a rack of the data or space from the data centre. You can bring your own server hardware and they will provide power, cooling, internet uplink and security.
The benefit is that you are responsible for own server software, Data Storage etc. This simply cleared that whatever happens only you will be responsible for that, either for replacing it or for any other tasks or even for the failure of hardware.
You can choose this colocation hosting service if you have technical knowledge of it but you should not choose this if you have a small business or a start-up business, Because it is not worth to invest in human resources, time, money and many more things for the small business.
Conclusion
I hope it cleared all your doubts about hosting, hosting strategies and different ways of hosting your site. You can use any method to host your site which is relevant to you. If this article might become useful to you than Please let me know your feedback in the comment section. Thanks for reading.
Leave a Reply