What kind of web hosting appropriate for you – ABCD of web hosting….

Like many others – if you are also confused with what kind of web hosting you need for your website or web services – You need to read this article. Web hosting is explained in the most easiest words…

You’ve probably heard of different kinds of hosting like – Linux, Windows, Shared, Reseller, Virtual Private server, Dedicated server, Cloud server, SSD hosting, Distributed hosting bla bla bla… These are various hosting types based on variety of Hosting requirements. Some are probably using expensive hosting which they don’t even need and some are probably using hosting grading lower than their actual requirements. So let’s reveal who should use which kind of hosting …

Hosting Server Operating system:

WINDOWS or LINUX ?

The first thing some one needs to address is what kind of hosting server they should choose to host their website or applications in. If some one needs the following Windows (Microsoft) based services – they should choose windows hosting:

• ASP Classic
• ASP.NET
• MSSQL (Microsoft SQL Server)
• MS Access (Microsoft Access)
• Visual Basic Development
• C#
• Services of Microsoft Exchange
• Services of Microsoft SharePoint

If you do not need any of the above and would rather need to run HTML or Php/MySQL based websites or applications – you should always choose Linux Servers. Wondering – why? Although you can use Windows server for hosting HTML or Php/MySQL based websites – it is cheaper in Linux server. Linux doesn’t require hosting providers pay a handsome amount for operating system license.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF WEB HOSTING:

Shared Hosting:

This is the most popular hosting type and the cheapest one. Hosting providers host numbers of websites in a single server – and all the sites share the server resources (Processor, Ram, Bandwidth etc). There are millions and millions of websites in the world which doesn’t really have much visitors visiting their site. Personal or corporate whatever the site type may be – if those are not expected to get millions of hits per month – those are well fitted in shared hosting. A single server can host thousands of such websites. In this kind of server – managing the server is done by the web hosting provider. The clients get a certain amount of space (hard disk space) to keep their website data, emails, databases etc. Most of the time they get a control panel (ie, cPanel, Plesk etc), FTP Access and SSH access (In rare cases) to administer their hosting accounts. Hosting providers limit resource usage for shared hosting and if a website gets too many hits or is highly resource intensive – it may not fit in shared hosting server. Hosting providers will then refuse to host the site in their server and will probably suggest you for a dedicated server or Virtual Private server.

Reseller Hosting:

This is somewhat similar to shared hosting in terms of server resource usage policy. The difference with shared hosting is – reseller hosting allows users to resell the hosting space they buy. For example, If I buy a 100GB Reseller hosting account – I can break this 100GB web space according to my needs and resell this space to my own clients. I may create smaller packages like 1GB or 2GB or 10GB etc. Many a web hosting providers started their journey with a simple reseller hosting. Server resource usage policy per website is same as Shared hosting accounts.

Dedicated Server Hosting:

The name says it all – this hosting comes with a dedicated server for a single customer. If I buy a dedicated server – the whole resource in the server is mine. I can use this server to host one single website or I may host numbers of websites in it. I can either make the server a windows server or can install linux and make it a linux server. I can set software and settings according to my needs. There are some sites which have too many visitors – Dedicated server is appropriate for them. However, If someone wants to do web hosting business and is unhappy with reseller hosting (shared) hosting environment – Dedicated server is perfect for them. Dedicated servers can be self managed or it can be managed by the server providers. Self managed servers are cheaper and the responsibility to manage the server relies on the server owner. On the other hand Managed servers are managed by the server (hosting) providers. But it is costlier than self managed one.

Virtual Private Server (VPS):

If someone needs a dedicated hosting environment – but Dedicated server is too much in terms of resource and pricing – Virtual Private Server (VPS) is the perfect hosting solution for them. This is a solution which is in between shared hosting and dedicated server hosting. A single server is sliced into a few chunk of Virtual servers – which individually acts as a virtual dedicated server with the functionality of a dedicated server. Although the server resources are shared among the VPSs, but all the VPSs do possess a committed resources (CPU, Ram, HDD Space) of their own. Like dedicated servers – we can install whatever OS we want in it. We can install software and settings according to our needs – which is not possible in shared hosting servers. Now a days some hosting providers term Virtual servers as Cloud Servers. One benefit of cloud server is – it gives the freedom of scalability. It means I can get more resources whenever I will be needing it. I can then reduce resources to what I have. Another benefit of this is – it gives us the ability to pay for the resources according to our need. We only pay for whatever resources we use for a certain period. It even provides the ability to pay on hourly basis.

SSD Hosting:

SSD hosting is a special kinds of hosting where the storage is SSD (Solid State Drive). SSDs are special kinds of storage devices where unlike normal hard drives – data is not stored in disk drives. The drives works the same way our pen drives or memory cards work. The main benefit of this kinds of drives is – it can handle data more efficiently. To be more precise – it has more read/write capabilities than the normal hard drives. For websites which deal with a lot of visitors it is beneficial to a great extent. Moreover, the websites load much faster as SSDs do not have latency which Disk drives has.