At present, virtual hosting is like a commodity, there are a variety of types to choose from. Choosing a low-cost web hosting may seem like a wise choice, but in fact it can cause losses for your business. In fact, choosing the right web hosting for your business requires quite a bit of knowledge.
Next, the editor will introduce how to choose a suitable virtual hosting for you from three main aspects:
②What Are the Types of Hosting?
③Which Web Hosting Type Should You Choose?
What is the Web Hosting?
The Web hosting is a kind of service offered by web hosts, which enables webmasters to create a website accessible via the World Wide Web without the need to have their own web servers. In other words, you need to host the website on the web servers of a hosting provider who will get paid from you. Then, the web hosting allocates as many as resources to your website and makes site development easier.
Web hosting services provide high-performance computers (i.e. web server) with a high- speed network. When visitors input your domain name (such as Bisend.com), the web servers hold your website files and then transfer the website content to their computer so they can be linked to your web server and get the website information.
So, choosing a web host is the first and most important thing in creating a website.
Types of Hosting
Web hosting service has developed with the progress of technology to meet users’ needs. It is important to understand that this kind of service is suitable for your website before signing up for web hosting service. And now there are various types of web hosting:
- Shared Web Hosting
- VPS (Virtual Private Servers)
- Dedicated Hosting
In general, there are three common web hosting types in this field, including shared web hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server. Each of them is suitable for certain websites. Thus, you need to make a wise choice on which type is the one to host your site. In the following, we list an in-depth introduction about those three options.
1、Shared Web Hosting
Shared web hosting means that multiple users share the same server resources with each other, like storage, bandwidth, CPU and RAM. Among the different types of web hosting, shared web hosting is the most common one, and also the easiest to manage, which is an ideal solution for bloggers, website designers, e-commerce stores and small business. Usually, a shared hosting plan features high scalability, which means, you can increase or decrease the demands based on your needs.
This type of hosting has its specific advantages and also disadvantages.
Advantages：
- Cost effective:sharing with other customers means you don’t need to pay for the whole server in advance. If paid annually, many discounts are available. For example, bisend.com offers 64% discount for customers pay for the 3 years subscription.
- Easy to Administer – the hosting providers handle all of the complicated configuration, set-up and maintenance, so you just need to add domains, set up email accounts with theircontrol panel.It’s worry-free and risk-free.
- Control Panel – all shared web hosting providers offer their services with a user-friendly control pane, such as cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, vDeck and much more, whichcan help you upload your site, create email accounts and a database easily.
Disadvantages：
- Limited Resources -on the shared web hosting platform, the services as disk space, monthly traffic, email accounts, FTP accounts, databases etc are limited for each user. In addition, all resources on the server are shared, including RAM and CPU, the single Apache server, the single MySQL server and the single Mail server.
- Restricted Installation – users are not acceptableto install modules and programs on the server to run your own website, because provider needs to satisfy the average clients’ needs. You are not able to modify the server configurations, settings and others.
- Security – if one user installs an insecure script, the others can be influenced by the risk factors.
- Reliability – if one user takes up all the bandwidth or causes the server malfunction, all the other users can be affected.
On the basis of the description above, shared web hosting is the most affordable way to host a website and suitable for the majority needs of small business and personal. If you are looking for a suitable web hosting service for blogs, personal websites, photo galleries, communities, small business websites, shared web hosting can be a good option for you.
Most shared hosting servers use Linux web hosting or Windows web hosting to provide customers for a higher rate per month, and also provide scalable packages for customers to choose which one satisfies the needs of them. Linux web hosting service is popular for the affordable price, rich scripts like PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl and Python. While Windows web hosting is widely used to run classic Asp or .NET scripts, but the charge is higher than Linux web hosting.
2、VPS(Virtual Private Server)
VPS is a virtual machine provided by a hosting service company, which is the bridge between the shared web hosting and dedicated web hosting. Unlike shared web hosting, each VPS hosting plan allows customers to take full control of the web server but still share RAM, CPU and bandwidth with other users.
By using virtualization technology, the server is partitioned into separate parts, and each part can perform like a full dedicated server with its own dedicated resources. It’s usually more expensive than shared hosting but a little bit cheaper than dedicated hosting and also provides a high level of security, speed and operation.
For people can hold more resources than the shared hosting, they need to pay more money for the VPS service likewise. VPS web hosting is a perfect option for websites which are having heavy traffic, or complex which required a dedicated environment.
It is especially suitable for the webmasters who want to have completely root control over the web server but have the serious limitation on the budget.
The advantages and disadvantages are as follows.
Advantages:
- Using VPS means partitioned resources such as CPU and memory, so you won’t be affected much by your sharers.
- Fewer users share the same server – compared with shared web hosting, your website will be allocated guaranteed resources.
- You can get more free to configure your server with virtualization software.
Disadvantages:
- More expensive: while fewer users share the same server, you have to pay more.
- Configuring your server demands more technical knowledge.
3、Dedicated Hosting （Dedicated Server）
Dedicated hosting is a type of web hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. It is aiming at large companies and high traffic websites. You can use multiple domains and host additional sites on the server if you want. The amount and type of software solutions you install are virtually unlimited.
If you aim at starting a website with large scale and require a large allocation of disk space, bandwidth, CPU and memory as well as high security guarantee, dedicated hosting is the best choice. As usual, dedicated hosting is much more expensive than shared web hosting and VPS hosting, around $100/mo.
As a high -end service in hosting industry, dedicated hosting is commonly purchased by some business, operate or large -sized websites for they have much more demands on hosting resources.(CPU-intensive, complicated hosting environment and so on)
Advantages:
- Flexibility and customization –customers can freely install their preferred hardware or software provisions according to their needs.
- Dedicated resources and secured performance – customers usethe whole server resources alone.
- Full control – customers have root access to their servers, configuring and adjusting the setup according to their needs.
Disadvantages:
- Customers need professional technical knowledge –customers will take the responsibility for maintenance and configuration of the server independently.
- More expensive – users have to pay for the entire server alone.
4、Other Hosting Terms
Managed Hosting: It allows users to have dedicated service without requiring substantial knowledge. It’s a good choice for popular sites without large staff or dedicated IT staff. With managed hosting, you can enjoy a more convenient web hosting service. At the same time, hosting company will configure server and install software for customers, and take care of their needs.
Unmanaged Hosting: It is cheaper than managed hosting because there is no management that means no routine support. Unmanaged Hosting offers you complete control: sole access and total free. But if you struggle to install a control panel from scratch, some problems may happen from day one, because you may not have enough time to manage a server on top of other tasks.
Which Web Hosting Type Should You Choose?
For some people lack experience on the site building, they need to depend on an excellent hosting company that provides them with first-class solutions.
There are many sorts of hosting companies in the industry, coming with multifarious services. In this situation, some newbies get confused to pick out the most suitable one from thousands of options. To get around this confusion, we summarize the basic factors to consider in the following, including company’s reputation, price, hosting plan, features, after-sale service, etc.
Reputation
If you want to seek a reliable web host but lack understanding about the company, you should make a comprehensive investigation on customer review. This is because all reviews are based on real using experience and reflect the product quality intuitively. For some notorious hosting providers receiving a wide range of negative comments, you’d better keep away from them.
Price – Be Careful of Fire Sale Price
To make the products more competitive, many hosting companies provide fire sale price. There are serious limitations on budget for someone, who is more likely to trap in the troubles brought by low price or free service because such cheap hosting services always conceal some hidden fees. That is to say, you required to pay extras for some advanced features. In the end, the final price is much higher than the original one.
Plans – Choose the Most Suitable One
In general, the Windows OS and Linux OS are two of the most commonly used systems in the industry. For people setting up their sites based on .NET, Windows web hosting is created for them. If PHP and MySQL catch the fancy of you, Linux is a good option for your website. Many web hosts provide both options for customers as well as various plans. In this situation, you need to seriously consider which plan is your taste.
Resource Allocation – Disk Space & Bandwidth
Although more and more companies begin offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth, it is just a relative concept. In fact, the “unlimited” refers to sufficient resources allocation that can meet the maximum needs of your site. Some hosting providers without offering unlimited resources can also give you enough space to create a website only if they are able to provide you with more resources than you need.
Control Panel – User-friendly & Rich-featured
Control panel is a critical factor to build a website for it includes multiple site-management applications and tools. A good control panel can make the website management much easier and also save money, while a poor one can be a major hindrance to your work. The most popular control panel in the market are cPanel and Plesk. cPanel is designed for Linux web hosting. In general, Plesk is recognized as the most user -friendly control panel, coming with an intuitive graphic interface. With it, users can manage their websites and servers by simply clicking the icons.
Network & Infrastructure
Reliability and speed determine whether your site is able to run fast and smoothly. To generate a reliable and secure hosting environment, hosting providers should utilize top-level data center with robust web servers to deliver at least 99.9% uptime as well as stunning access speed. You should check whether the company integrates with high-performance infrastructures, like UPS power backup, fully redundant power, Cisco firewall, N+1 generator, DDoS attack response, etc. Besides, 24/7 monitoring is also a must -have of qualified hosting provider.
Money Back Guarantee
Most web hosts provide money back guarantee to make sure that if customers are not satisfied with the service, they can get a refund. What’s more, the industry standard of money back guarantee time is at least 30 days. Be aware of those providers who don’t offer at least 30-day money back guarantee.
There may be some other features that we didn’t mention. To get more information about shared hosting and its features, go to Bisend.com to get more information which can meet your needs.
