It may be difficult for one to decide amongst shared, VPS, or dedicated hosting for his website. Web hosting of different types is nowadays available for website developers. The choice that works the best for one is always difficult to finalize.
Web Hosting
Web hosting primarily refers to the location where your website is present over the internet. A hosting company provides web hosting services. It allows people to make their websites accessible to everyone, via the World Wide Web.
When people will type your domain name in the search bar of their search engine, they will instantly access your website.
How expensive is web hosting?
People have a premonition that web hosting is an expensive affair, which it ceases to be. Expensive web hosting solutions are everywhere to be found; a few may even cost one up to USD 500 monthly.
But cheap web hosting solutions can also be found. They'd host your website for the entire month for USD 2 or USD 3 only. The solutions are reliable while being inexpensive. In some cases, they'd provide you with the SSL certificate as well, along with a free domain name, and a guarantee of 100% uptime.
When one’s budget is tight, these are the best solutions available for one. Doing away with reliability and quality is also not required. One can comfortably go for one of the less expensive hosting options.
Why should one avoid free web hosting services?
Free web hosting services are best avoided because they come with drawbacks, such as:
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Unwanted ads
Irrelevant ads displayed over your website are a part of the monetization scheme for the advertisers. But visitors may at times become distracted by the ads.
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Limited traffic
Limited traffic made available with the services of free hosting providers make it difficult to grow business.
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Switching hosting provider
Changing the hosting services provider becomes difficult even if a user intends to do so.
Three main types of web hosting solutions
The type of website that one intends to build will determine the type of hosting solution that one should be going for. Your website could be something like a basic blog, or a simple website for your business.
In some cases, people prefer to go with a website that is an online store and sells products and services to people. A website could alternately be a social media website, where people share posts with their friends.
Choosing the web hosting type should be done after laying a bit of consideration over the matter. Matters such as security and performance should be paid heed to. One has to consider if the website can grow easily if the particular web hosting type is chosen. Similarly, managing the website should also be easy for the website owner.
Pricing is an equally important consideration. A website owner will prefer that the web hosting type and plan that he chooses to go ahead easily fits within his budget. When one is going to spend some money on his web hosting plan, it should be the ideal match for his personal requirements.
Let us take a look at VPS hosting, one of the most important kinds of web hosting.
VPS Hosting
VPS is short for Virtual Private Server. In the case of VPS hosting, sharing the server is essential. But, when we compare VPS hosting with Shared hosting, one shares the server with fewer websites. All the resources do not need to be shared as well. Instead, the resources are all split evenly.
The key advantage that comes into the picture with this arrangement is that there will be no bad neighbors who will use up all your resources. Instead, there will be usage limits on how many resources all users of the server are going to use.
In case your neighbor finishes his limit, his website is going to go down. But your website will still be up and running.
Let us now take a look at the pros and cons of VPS hosting.
PROS
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Resources are not shared
All resources need not be shared with other websites.
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Power
As compared to shared hosting, VPS hosting is more powerful. It also scores higher in the terms of speed, performance, and scalability.
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Flexibility
With VPS hosting being more flexible, customization simplifies for a user. When he makes changes in his hosting plan, other users stay unaffected.
CONS
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Pricier
In comparison with shared hosting, VPS is pricier.
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Technical
The setup process for VPS hosting is reasonably more technical as compared to shared hosting. This may become difficult for beginners.
Shared vs. VPS vs. Dedicated Hosting: Which one should I go ahead with?
Shared Hosting
In case your website need not deal with excessive traffic, then shared hosting is a feasible option for one. If your website does begin to come across more traffic than you had initially anticipated, then changing the type of hosting is always an option before one.
When a startup intends to create a website, they’d prefer that they stick to a budget. This is an achievable metric in the case of shared hosting. A user can grow his online presence, even as he sticks to a budget.
For static business sites, shared hosting is a recommendable choice. Shared hosting will work well for personal websites as well because uptimes have a limited bearing on profits.
VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting is the most feasible option if your website will be getting more traffic. VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting. So, whenever your website traffic begins to grow, it is a fine time to make a switchover to VPS hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the right choice to go ahead with in case your website handles sensitive transactions. Dedicated hosting makes high-security levels available for a website. It also makes a feasible option to go ahead with when you maintain video streaming or numerous high-resolution images over your website, which you do not intend to share with other websites.