Hosting service providers offer varied range of services depending on the requirements and budget of a customer. While individuals who want to run a few blogs, have got modest needs, companies that get massive traffic on their websites every day, need to look for something more robust, reliable, secure, and a service that can sustain heavy load without any hassles.
So, it’s quite obvious that since requirements are different, the cost of services tends to vary by a large extent too. Here’s an insight into different types of hosting and see the kinds of requirements each of them cater to.
Types of Hosting
Shared Hosting
This is one of the most common hosting services offered by hosting providers and can be a very good low price option for modest needs. You pay a nominal monthly charge and get a share of one of the servers that has many other sites hosted in it. The problem is the server you are sharing with others might not be very reliable. Monthly cost can vary from $1 to $20.
Shared hosting customers get limited services in terms of server resources. Normally, they are provided with a single control panel login through which, they get to manage all the aspects of their website(s).
As the server is shared with many others, the level of security is quite weak. The other drawback is if any of the sites hosted in the server get immense traffic then at that time it is quite likely that it may slow down the speed of all the other websites, since the servers are designed to handle limited traffic at any given point of time.
This kind of hosting can be a good solution for small businesses that get average traffic in the range of 300-500 hits a day.
Technical support teams are normally very good, and shared hosting is extremely cost-effective; but on the downside, the customers get very limited software and database support, and server resources.
Not all the service providers offer semi-dedicated hosting and it is probably a more customized option for those whose sites have become bigger to be sustained in a shared server but have not grown so much to get a dedicated server.
The servers here have very less number of customers than you normally see in shared servers. These websites require more number of resources compared to those sites we see in shared servers. Increased number of resources also means very fewer restrictions in terms of support.
Dedicated Hosting
This is the most trusted hosting service out there but it can come hard on your pocket if you are running few personal blogs or have a small time business. Normally big firms with heavy traffic everyday go for this kind of hosting solution. If you are planning to run couple of personal blogs and do not want to go for costly dedicated servers then you can as well do it on your own provided you have a dedicated computer than can remain connected to internet all the time.
In simple words, a dedicated server has only your website to support and you do not share resources with any other sites. It is your wish if you want to have one single website in the server or hundreds of them. Normally commerce web sites that deal with transactions every day go for dedicated servers or even many hosting companies opt for dedicated hosting for their own websites.
Security and reliability do not normally become an issue with these kinds of hosting but it can be a costly affair with around $100 that you need to shell out per month. The customers also get multiple domain names, top class database and email solutions and unlimited software support. One thing a service provider should take care of is offer good customer support to the clients and the support team should be experienced and skilled.
Reseller Hosting
This one offers all the different features of shared hosting services and at the same time it allows the customers to have different hosting accounts with the help of their own control panel login details. This is a perfect option for those who want to play hosting company to their own needs or even provide similar services to their customers and give them their own control panel so that with the help of login details they can manage their own account.
Co-Location Hosting
Co-location is an entirely different concept where you get to place your own private server within the premises of your service provider. It is almost like having your own server in your own office; the only difference is that you get to place your server at a place, which is meant for it. You get to design your own server; right from its software to its hardware.
Normally, Internet Service Providers have these kinds of dedicated
resources like top class security, regular power backup and round-the-clock internet service. Customers get good up-time, best security, high bandwidth, and unlimited tech support as well.
On the downside, it is expensive and requires high level of skills on customer’s part as they themselves have to take care of most of the glitches. Configuration and debugging can also be quite painstaking in co-location hosting. You can have the entire server dedicated to your sites; the difference is this time the server is your own. It can cost you around $100 every month.
Free Web Hosting
There are companies that offer free web hosting for your modest needs. So what is the catch? Well the catch is you will have to display their banner on your home page or even all the pages of your website. Then you might have to add the company’s domain name in the domain name of your site; however there are many free hosting providers that do not demand this.
If you are not bothered about growing numbers of ads on your web pages and don’t require any kind of customer support then this one can be a viable option. Normally, people who want to start personal blogs for non-monetary purposes opt for free hosting. Security is quite low and you don’t really get any kind of support whatsoever. And, since channel is geared towards hosting providers, we would not be discussing further about free hosting, and the best example is Google Web Hosting service
VPS Hosting
VPS stands for virtual private servers. In this case a physical server is split into multiple private servers, which are something like dedicated containers. All these virtual servers in the actual physical server make use of same set of resources like memory, hard drives, network card, CPUs etc. This way you get a personal secure hosting environment. The best part is that you can remotely control and mange all the server functions.
The servers are completely managed by the service providers and you need to worry about kind of technical glitches. In spite of all technical advancements, you as a customer will be sharing resources with others in the same physical server. Most importantly this kind of hosting service might come very hard at your pocket.
File Hosting
File hosting helps in hosting and exchanging files that can not be easily supported by emails as they are normally of a very big size. Gradually file sizes are increasing and the need to share, save and a have a back up of the files, gave birth to the concept of file hosting. Some of the best file-hosting providers include FileQube, FileFactory, Media Fire and MyFreeFileHosting. Most of these service providers offer free hosting too.
Cloud Hosting
This is certainly the future of hosting industry. All the files are stored in a virtual cloud of computers or a very big network of servers. In cloud hosting, you can very easily scale up and scale down your resources as per your needs. It is possible only because the server space needed by you is not just hosted in one single server but on various servers. The best part is that you pay only for what you use. On the downside there still are many apprehensions about security levels in cloud hosting.
Email Hosting
Email hosting has been on the boom for quite sometime now. The reason is simple; emails are supposed to be the quickest and fastest way of communication within a company. So it is very important that the configured email service within a company should not only be lightning fast but should also assure confidentiality. MobileSyncMail and POP3/IMAP are two of the most common types of email hosting.
ISP Hosting
Many Internet Service Providers offer hosting services to their customers but the drawback is that most of the resources including server space is limited. So you can not really think of starting a set of business websites with the help of ISP hosting. While you have complete control of software, hardware, modifying and upgrading the system, security and efficiency of your hosted websites will always be questionable.
Secure Image Hosting
Image hosting can be a big pain if you try to upload a host of images on a private server or even in a shared server because it will chew off almost all your resources making the entire process annoyingly slow. Not to mention, security again becomes an issue if image hosting is not carried out with the help of professionals. This is why bloggers normally go for secure image hosting. Some of the most popular secure image hosting providers include the likes of WordPress, Flickr, and Picasa.