Types of Web Hosting

There are many different types of web hosting accounts, all with a different price range and different feature set. The of these types would be Shared hosting. Shared hosting is generally the type of hosting you see advertised for $5 a month, with a gob of bandwidth and storage, and a huge feature sure. This type of hosting is called Shared due to the fact that you are sharing one web server with hundreds of other people.

These types of plans are great for those who do not want to spend lots of money, or who do not have much knowledge with managing their own server. The big drawback here is that you are still sharing with hundreds of people. If just one of those people become exploited, your website is at risk of becoming exploited as well.

The next type of web hosting is a virtual private server, or VPS. A VPS is like a Shared hosting account. You are still sharing a server with multiple people. However, in these cases, you are sharing with far less people, in most cases between ten and twenty other accounts. You also get your own environment that mimics a full standalone server. You get your own memory allocation, just like a real server, and a you get a chunk of the available hard drive space. These types of hosting accounts can either come bare, with no software installed, or come with all of the applications a Shared hosting account would have. The price will dictate the feature set. The price for these types of accounts will generally be between $30 and $70 monthly. These accounts are great for someone who needs to configure their own specific software, or for someone who needs root or administrator access to their hosting environment.

The last type of web hosting service is a Dedicated Server. A dedicated server is a full standalone server that only one customer uses. The major draw to dedicated hosting is that there are no other accounts on the server. In most cases, there is nothing on the server at all when you receive it, and you are required to configure every aspect of the server. For those who are looking at spending the type of money a dedicated server requires, a blank slate is just what the doctor ordered. Dedicated hosting can vary greatly in price depending on the hardware of the server, and the bandwidth provided with the server. Prices are around $99 up to $1000 monthly. Dedicated hosting is not for first timers, or those without experience configuring and maintaining their own server. Support for this type of hosting, while generally a 24/7 service, is limited in what will be covered. Only hardware or network issues are covered in Dedicated support.