Which Type of Hosting Do You Need?

One of the age old questions asked by users who are interested in building websites is, "What type of hosting do I need?" Because web hosting comes in many flavors, it can be hard for less experienced users to determine which one they need. There are various costs, features, and levels of performance associated with each type, so it's generally good to get a breakdown on each one before making a definite decision.

There are essentially six types of hosting. These include:

·       Free hosting

·       Shared hosting

·       Dedicated hosting

·       Managed dedicated hosting

·       Cloud hosting

·       Clustered hosting

• Free Hosting

This is the most basic type of hosting offered on the internet, and as stated, it's free of cost to the user. However, there are a few drawbacks associated with it. Free hosting restricts control to the user by limiting bandwidth, restricting storage size, and enforcing advertisements on the hosted websites. It's often very difficult to implement monetization strategies on websites with free hosting.

• Shared Hosting

When a website utilizes shared hosting, it is hosted on a dedicated server with other websites. Each website on the server must share resources with the other hosted websites. Sharing resources and space poses security risks, and it's often difficult for websites to scale on a shared hosting plan. However, shared hosting caters to customers with minor needs.

• Dedicated Hosting

When a website has dedicated hosting, it utilizes an entire server's resources for itself. In essence, the website does not have to share resources with other websites on the server. Dedicated hosting provides a complete administrative access, a significant amount of features, and an unlimited use of resources. However, users with dedicated hosting are expected to handle security and maintenance on their own accord. Dedicated hosting is ideal if you expect to generate high volume traffic and use custom software.

• Managed Dedicated Hosting

With managed dedicated hosting, you get to rest easy while the complicated stuff is taken care of by a hosting provider or IT professional. Managed dedicated hosting provides all of the same benefits of dedicated hosting, except you can also enjoy virus scanning, spam filtering, software updates and maintenance, security auditing, and other features.

• Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is a newer variant of hosting that many users are taking advantage of. This type involves hosting websites via virtual servers while deriving resources from remote networks of physical servers.

• Clustered Hosting

Lastly, clustered hosting provides a hosting solution to large scale websites that receive high volume traffic. Clustered hosting is a term used to indicate a group of servers that are dedicated to hosting one website. When one server goes down for maintenance or crashes, the other server(s) remain up in order to ensure consistent uptime. This type of hosting ensures availability for websites that simply cannot afford to go down. It is an expensive type of hosting that is extremely robust in nature, and it requires additional monitoring and managing of the larger network infrastructure. However, the benefits for large scale websites outweigh the drawbacks.

Aubrey Moulton is a writer for Nethosting.com. She has over eight years of SEO experience and loves hiking in her spare time.