Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most popular form of hosting right now, probably due to its price (extremely cheap) and convenience (no technical knowledge needed). This is the best plan for a small, personal, or business site. Included in this plan are free domains, unlimited traffic, and more than enough disk space. It is rare that a website exceeds its bandwidth or CPU allowance, and when that happens, something is probably wrong. Shared hosting also includes easy options to install different CMS systems.

There are a couple of downsides to using shared hosting. The security is not at the same level as it is with dedicated hosting. The other downside is that you will be sharing space with thousands of other sites on the same server. You may experience more outages, as a result of others overloading their sites. However, this will not kill your site, and hosting companies do warn or even suspend accounts that exceed their bandwidth limites, so that the server is not destabilized.

WordPress Hosting

Another form of hosting, that has recently exploded in popularity, is hosting for blogs, specifically WordPress. There are quite a few advantages with WordPress hosting if you are a blogger. By letting the web host install and configure the WordPress files, you will not only save time, but will also avoid the risk of things going wrong during a self-install. WordPress hosting is an all-inclusive deal that takes care of everything, and allows you to  get a website/blog up and running in no time at all.

Dedicated Vs Shared Web Hosting

When it is time to upgrade to a dedicated hosting plan, your needs will change. Your website would be drawing at least 3000 visitors per day, and you would need more flexibility to control your site. While it depends on which operating system you prefer, you might choose  dedicated Linux hosting. Linux is a very flexible, popular operating system, which is often used in web servers, and is based on open-source technology. The other alternative is to use dedicated windows hosting, which is beneficial as well (yes, windows is not so bad).

Dedicated web hosting gives you a server, storage space, bandwidth, and memory – all to yourself. It is costlier but you should be able to afford it, to make your website grow faster and to generate more traffic.

You’re On Your Own

Well, not entirely. Your web host company will maintain the nature of your server, and will often offer support, with back-ups and customer service. Nevertheless, having a dedicated server is a bigger responsibility than simply being a part of a shared hosting server. It demands more knowledge, and you might want to consider securing that knowledge before signing up for a dedicated server.

Bottom line

If you are facing a hard time in deciding whether to get a dedicated web-hosting plan, then we can make it easier for you. A website that is constantly expanding and generating a lot of traffic simply needs a dedicated server, in order to maintain its online existence. If you just want something simple, to present your design portfolio or blog, get WordPress or shared hosting.

This post was originally published on Websites and Webhosting at Types of Web Hosting.