Types of Hosting

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Posted by CJVJ on Webmasters-Place.com || Copyright © CJVJ(cjvj.net)

Continuing my hosting article spree :rolleyes:

I apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes

Types of hosting

Free Hosting

Admit it, we all love free stuff (Don't believe me? A search for "Free Stuff" comes up with about 23,300,000 results :P), So naturally some bright spark came up with free hosting.

Funnily enough, free hosts are out to make money. They may do this by encouraging you to sign up for their paid hosting plans or by putting adverts on your site.

Free hosting is simple, you get hosting....for free. However, the saying "You get what you pay for" comes back to haunt us. Free hosting Will come with drawbacks. The most common are:

• Slow website speed - Free hosts will put as many websites on a server as they can
• Limit on bandwidth and/or space - You won't get enough space/bandwidth to host a popular website
• No or limited support - Most free hosts will give you your free webhosting then ignore you. Don't expect them to give up their time to help newbies.
• Adverts - More often than not, free hosts will stick dirty great banner ads on your site or bombard your visitors with popup.
• Limited Options - You can forget about fancy software like Cpanel and Fantastico.
• Nasty Small Print - Be careful, free hosts can catch you out with their TOS

But then again, you must remember that it is Free. :2sm

Free Hosts = Very Small sites or test sites. Ideal for newbies to websites and webmastering

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting available, and will suite most people. Shared hosting is for Small/Medium personal and business websites. Shared hosting is where web hosts place many websites on one server; you are allocated a quota of bandwidth and space. Shared hosting comes with many more features than free hosting. The main advantages of shared hosting over free hosting are:

• Cpanel or other control panel
• Much more bandwidth and space quota
• MySQL Databases, PHP supported
• Webmail
• Other Script languages supported
• Support/FAQ

Because multiple sites are placed on one server you site will not load lightning fast but it will load much faster than a free host. Shared hosting is a cost effective way of getting your site online

Shared Hosting = Small/Medium sites that have low resource requirements. Good for starting out.


VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting

VPS is seen as the step between Shared hosting and dedicated servers. VPS is where although there are several clients on the same server, the server has been partitioned so that each client has root privileges and can customize the server more than they could on a shared host. Clients are allocated resources, such as 10% CPU usage each.

The advantages of VPS are:

• Faster Website - You have more resources
• Customisation of 'Server' - With root privileges, you can do more to customize your 'server' to your needs
• Cheaper than dedicated server - Much cheaper
• More bandwidth/Space - Much more than shared
• More 'Extras' - such as MySQL Databases, Webmail accounts etc.

However, VPS require more knowledge of server management and I recommend learning a bit about running a VPS before you buy. Also, they are more expensive than shared hosting.

VPS = Medium/Large sites that are not quite ready for a dedicated server but to large for shared hosting.

Reseller hosting

Reseller hosting is where you buy hosting from a company and can (re)sell it to people. This gives the opportunity to make some money. With reseller hosting, you do not have to worry about the infrastructure of hosting (Such as datacenters, servers etc.) Reseller accounts normally come with a specialized control panel and plenty of space/bandwidth and other resources.

Reseller hosting is more expensive than shared hosting. Watch out that you try not to buy reseller hosting from another reseller. That would mean that your clients would be buying hosting from a host which is a reseller of a reseller (I think anyway...its confusing: p )

Choose wisely when selecting a reseller hosting provider, if they go down then you will have many unhappy clients.

Reseller hosting = Sites that want to (re)sell hosting onto other people

Dedicated Servers

The big daddy of hosting! Your own server When you purchase a dedicated server, you are renting your own server. For allot of money, you get a server which only has your website on it. Also, you get root privileges and can install software on the server. Managed hosting is much more expensive as the host manages the server. With dedicated servers, you get:

• Loads of space and bandwidth - I mean loads
• Ability to fully customize the server - You can install software, change root settings etc.
• Huge increase in speed - With the server only hosting one site, the site can be reached by visitors much faster.
• Can customize server hardware - Request a memory upgrade, ask for a new hard drive, upgrade the CPU etc.

Dedicated servers can seem frighteningly expensive, only high traffic sites should consider them. If you are opting for unmanaged dedicated servers, make sure you know how to use and control the server. Otherwise the server is useless.

Dedicated servers = Large sites with high resource requirment

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Yes, I've probably forgotten loads of information (co-location) :3sm . However, I will edit this to include more information once I remember it.

//Me hopes this was useful

Copyright © CJVJ. You may reproduce this as long as you credit me

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