What Kind Of Hosting Do You Need?

There are many different types of hosting for your website and easy to get lost with all the technical information bombarding you when reviewing various hosting companies.

This article aims to explain some of the options and the provide the best hosting you need for your website. If you are just starting out and have one website your best bet is to get Shared Hosting, or sometimes referred to as “cpanel Hosting”, for the hosting software you will use when managing your website.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is the lowest tier of website hosting, most hosting companies you will find in search results will provide some sort of shared hosting. You are essentially sharing a server with a bunch of the companies clients but you each have your own access to your hosting panel, most likely cpanel.

The advantage is the cost, this is usually the cheapest, but not always, option when hosting your website. It is also usually very quick to set up your account and get the hosting panel ready within minutes of paying for the first month.

Disadvantages are the risk of the server going down or being compromised. Once this happens all the sites on the server will be be at risk or offline until the technicians can get the server back up or cleaned up.

This is one big reason why it is so important to have a full back up of your website stored outside of your hosting company.

Another disadvantage is the trend in the industry of increasing the hosting costs year after year, in some cases companies will double or triple the fees. They do this because a lot of people do not know or want to move their website to another hosting company.

Shared hosting is fine to use for a new site or small website just starting out and want to get a website up and running. It is probably not a great long term plan, unless the website is just a basic brochure site.

Most web hosting companies, like HawkHost, provide shared hosting accounts.

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting (or Virtual Private Server) is considered the next tier up from Shared hosting.  This is similar to shared where there are a number of customer websites on one server, but that’s where the similarities end.

A VPS server is essentially divided up into small servers, one for each customer to control. This helps to protect the customer websites from malicious websites and if there is a problem with one customers server, it can be rebooted without rebooting the entire server and taking down all the sites.

The cost can be very comparable to shared hosting and in some cases cheaper.

It can also be used for other things than just hosting a website, you can store files or run specific software from the server.

The one main disadvantage of a VPS is you need to know how to manage a Linux or windows server in order to host your website (or project). Most VPS accounts are managed by the customer, which means they have to install and update all the software needed for the website. As well if the server goes down, it is up to the customer to get it back up and running. Many hosting companies will assist with this by having articles or a knowledge base. In fact some companies have such great articles on setting up the server that you can use them for your own servers at home if you have them.

This type of hosting is great for those who want to tinker with a server or already know how to manage Linux and a web server. If you have a site that is not mission critical or a hobby site, go give one a try.

Digital Ocean is a good example of a company that provides VPS hosting.

Reseller Hosting

A Reseller hosting account is used when you want to host more than one website but keep them on their own cpanel account. For example, a marketing agency may provide hosting for their clients but don’t want to manage the servers so they each get their own cpanel account to manage the website.

Smaller web hosting companies will start off using Reseller hosting as a way to break into the market and not have to spend a large amount of money upfront. In fact, if you are wanting to start your own web hosting company, this would be the best approach to take.

Generally speaking, the cost of reseller hosting is more than shared hosting and can be expensive depending on the plan and the needs of the clients.

Specialized Hosting

Specialized hosting are those companies that will support a specific software like WordPress or even an ecommerce site. For example, WPX is a well known company that supports WordPress hosting for their clients. Their servers are tuned for WordPress to ensure it runs properly and quickly.

Shopify is an example of hosting specifically geared towards an ecommerce website and they provide their own software.

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated server hosting is where you would rent the entire server located in a companies data center. There are many reasons you would want to do this like running a Windows server remotely.

Similar to this is Co-locating services, which is when you own the server and rent out space in a data center for your server, but you have complete control and responsibility of the server.

The cost and time required to manage these are more than most people need for their websites.

Hopefully this article will help decipher all the different types of hosting one can acquire when looking for a place to have their website hosted. Most people can use Shared Hosting to start and then move up to a VPS server if they need more control and resources.