What are The Different Types of Hosting Used for?

Diving in the title question, you know that there are many hosting types and you want to find out what is the purpose of each. More importantly, you wish to see which types best suit your website and business. At https://howtohosting.guide/, we have written this useful entry into mapping the various types under a single blueprint.

Shared Hosting

In a few words, Shared hosting is one of the types of web solutions that are home to multiple sites on a singular server. All websites included share resources within it and that is where the name derives from.

Best used for housing sites which do not gain high levels of traffic, static sites, in-development and test websites, personal ones, or other websites where uptime is not really that important. Shared solutions are also terrific for people running on a very low budget, who still want the services of a paid plan.

Pros and Cons

Shared is the cheapest of all types of host services due to the nature of how this network solution works. In most cases, it is enough to cover all needs of startups and small business ventures. It is easy to set up and uses with just a few clicks – no need of any administrative management as it is done for you. Especially if you have platforms installed as cPanel or WordPress, you are going to install everything with ease.

However, there are cons as there are with all types of hosts. A big traffic spike caused by a website on the network can take up more resources for itself. Thus, other sites on the server will be negatively impacted as performance goes. Security is another big issue. As many files for all websites are stored in virtually the same place, hackers can take advantage of that and pilfer information or users can run badly-configured scripts causing other issues. The lack of access to files or to admin privileges is both equally bad.

VPS Hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and that is what you get with it. It uses virtualization technology to provide a piece of a dedicated server-side. VPS is a shared environment, but it stores multiple virtual machines. Each machine has its own resources which other users cannot interfere with in any way.

People and businesses that have more money set for a host solution usually get the cheapest VPS option, which is an upgrade compared to the Shared option. Thus, VPS is more reliable than Shared, but you still do not have full control over the machine.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantages are the following:

•  Greater Reliability (Around 15 websites can use 1 VPS with evenly split resources);
•  Bigger Flexibility (You can customize your environment without affecting others);
•  Scalability (VPS can easily be upgraded without changing your site).

The disadvantages are as follows:

•  It is Expensive (even the lowest tier costs around 10-20 dollars a month);
•  Improper Resource Allocation (The web host may have oversold its space, causing issues);
•  Technical Knowledge Required (Configuring the hardware demands technical experience);
•  Lack of Control (While able to change things, you do not have full control).

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is quite simply having a whole, single server with all of its power and resources available just for you. This can be highly beneficial. Alas, it comes with many minuses attached.

Businesses should go for a Dedicated option only if they have highly specialized needs when it comes to hardware or they desire a lot of control over the privacy of the data handled compared to other host types. With Cloud solutions, Dedicated is becoming more and more redundant.

Pluses and Minuses

We will list the pluses first:

• Quick speeds, Fast connectivity and Upload times;
• Bigger Storage Space and Better Data Management;
• Full Control of your Server – able to run different Software;
• Higher Security making it hard to get Hacked.

Here are the minuses which come with Dedicated:

• High Price (Costs are considerable for the Features you get);
• Diagnosing and fixing Problems are both Difficult;
• Risk of Failure (If the single Server fails, it will take a long time to replace).

Cloud Hosting

A Cloud solution is a network running on lots of servers. Different data and operations are spread between these servers instead of hosted everything on one. With this smart resource management method, you have the advantages of scaling with ease, having control, and reasonable prices. You can easily change the server resources you will need and pay for your specific usage only.

The Cloud is best used for huge businesses, whose employees are tech-savvy, know how to manage their own servers and are ready to provide a service to other companies by fully utilizing resources daily and setup servers with a few clicks.

Benefits and Drawbacks

If any of the servers fail, there is a server readily available as backup to substitute it, so your websites are meant to be always up and running. Not to mention good backup solutions for your data are implemented.

Here are more of the benefits:

• Scalability (You can scale up easily and allocate by client demand on-the-go);
• Rapid Deployment (One click setups for migrating sites quickly are created);
• Smart Pricing (You can choose custom resources as well as related prices);
• Better Performance (multiple servers, load balancing, enough resources given);
• Rigidness (High availability and Uptime with interconnected servers ready to act as surrogates)

A few drawbacks to be considered:

• Security (Risks of hacking, privacy breaches, and cyberattacks exist);
• Hidden Expenses (unknown expenses can raise the price higher than expected);
• Lack of familiarity (not knowing the interface, functions, and technologies).

Other Hosting Types Explained

The host types described above are the most common ones, but there are a few more that can be combined with them. Different providers describe them in many ways, but we will disambiguate the terms so you can have a clear cut concept for each one.

Managed hosting plans include all hosting types that have technicians to manage the servers for the customers, providing advanced features such as monitoring, security, load balancing and backup management. In the sense that the provider is managing the mostly technical side of a server, be it VPS or Cloud or any of the hosting types.

Reseller hosting has hinted in its name to what it is. Reseller hosting is when somebody purchases hard drive space and bandwidth from a host provider and then re-sells those resources to third parties (mostly entrepreneurs and small businesses.

In that way, there is a middle-man who makes the first purchase and resells to make a profit. The middle-man can put their own branding through customized control panels and servers and also make custom prices for the business they are going to resell to.

Colocation hosting is similar to Dedicated. With colocation, companies use their own hardware but expand their versatility by getting server space in a foreign data center, to bring benefits. That way they improve on Internet bandwidth, server cooling systems and climate control, and power reliability. It is a win-win for both the companies and their customers.

Green hosting is eco-friendly which focuses on limiting resources to have less impact on the environment. With green types of technologies, such as the reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, powering data centers directly with renewable energy and using less energy overall, the green solution aims to preserve nature and increase awareness about the environmental impact we have on it. Companies that use these technologies are usually tech-giants have plenty of resources.

With the gathered knowledge you get the purpose of each type of host service. Choose wisely which one you want, but know that you can always switch between companies.