Web Hosting Types - Which Hosting to Choose

Some websites are small and need only tiny fraction of web hosting resources, other websites have thousands of visitors who are browsing millions of pages each day. There are different types of web hosting services and it is possible to find perfectly suitable match for both small and large websites.

To understand more clearly which hosting type particular website may need, you need to understand how hosting types differ from each other and what makes them unique. At first, we list here three main hosting types, they are:

• shared web hosting,
• VPS hosting (Virtual Private Server)
• dedicated server

On the end, we look also briefly to additional web hosting types, which are reseller hosting and cloud hosting. These hostings are less common and meant mostly for very special purposes.

Let's see each web hosting type little bit closer.

Shared Web Hosting

Is most used web hosting type, because it is covering well all needs  of typical websites. As the name indicates, one web server is shared by many small websites. Total cost of server hardware, operational software, internet connection and maintenance cost is spread between tens or even hundreds of websites, which all use small fraction of total resources available. Since server is shared by many websites, also the cost of shared web hosting is lowest possible. See list of best UK web hosting companies, which provide of best shared web hostings in the UK.

Shared web hosting offers also simple and convinient platform for setting up new websites. Shared web hosting has already server software, which is needed for processing website scripts and running database structures. With most common settings, you don't need to worry much about server environment while using popular content management systems, picture gallery scripts or blogging applications.

This web hosting type is good for starting with website, it offers cheap and convinient platform for getting things installed and running fast. However, when your website grows and has thousands of visitors per day, you may need more powerful web hosting solution.

VPS hosting

The abbreviation VPS stands for "Virtual Private Server" and the solution offers more powerful platform for hosting medium sized websites. VPS hosting offers larger segment of web server and each client has individually adjustable operation system. It makes easier to manage software and configure for particular website needs.

VPS hosting is by price, resource usage and flexiblity just somewhere between shared hosting and dedicated server. It is good choice if your website doesn't fit to shared hosting any more and it doesn't yet need all web hosting resources available in private server. VPS hosting solutions are most of the time managed by web hosting maintenance staff, so there is no need for doing all web hosting software management by yourself.

Good thing about VPS hosting is, that it is just little bit more expensive than shared hosting, but it offers more flexible and safer platform for running your website. If you are operating website, which is really important for your business processes, like online booking systems or ecommerce, your forum or blog has already been growing, then you need definitely to choose VPS hosting. 

Dedicated servers

This is the most powerful web hosting solution of these three. You get entire web server for your own use and have most flexiblity to choose server operation system and configure it in a way you want. Dedicated server is also safest choice, because there are no other clients in the same server.

Dedicated server is best choice when your website has reached about million pageviews per day or the website has very complex database queries, which need more server resources than available in shared hosting or VPS hosting plans. The need for dedicated server may be often determined by very specific factors, like the planned growth of website or cyclical nature of resource usage.

While looking for dedicated server solution, you need to be aware, that these are less standardized and the amount of services may vary from one provider to other. Roughly speaking, dedicated server may be managed or unmanaged. Managed dedicated server means, that software installation, monitoring and maintenance is provided by web hosting company as a service. Unmanaged dedicated web server is typically provided without operational software and it is only suitable for clients who are with professional experiences of web development and web server system administration. 

As mentioned earlier, dedicated servers are often more customizable than other web hosting types. You need to be aware of different meaning of "managed dedicated server", since some hosting providers offer management software with web based control panels and other companies offer dedicated system administrators, who configure web server and network for your specific needs.

Other types of web hosting

Shared web hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers are three main types of web hosting solutions, which are offered by web hosting providers most commonly. There are also two hosting types, which are used less often for special purpose.

Reseller web hosting is type of shared hosting, which allows to buy server resources with wholesale prices and sell them to third parties. It is often used by reseller companies for providing simple and standardized solution for hosting their clients websites.

Reselling hosting accounts allow using unique brands and doesn't need extensive knowledge about web server and network engineering. Reselling hosting is mostly used by web design companies or starting enterpreneurs, to provide web hosting for their clients as add-on service.

Cloud Hosting is newest web hosting type and offers completely different allocation of server resources and pricing models compared to more traditional hosting solutions. Cloud hosting service uses special software, which connects many web hosting servers to one array and allows more flexible allocation of resources for each website. It is very usable for popular websites, which experience very wide fluctuations in traffic. If the unregular number of visitors makes prediction of resource usage impossible, the resources are just used when needed.