What It Is

With the rapid advancement of internet services web hosting has become a much sought after activity as far as online businesses are concerned. A web hosting company provides you the space to ‘host’ either your personal homepage or your business profile and webpage. Using a web hosting company can prove very beneficial to you, as even your prospective employers might want to take a look at your personal thoughts and other details from your very own web page. Businesses too can be successfully expanded and consolidated over the internet by building great networks through your business website. For all of this to work, one must understand the importance of web hosting.

Paid hosting, free hosting, file web hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting and clustered hosting are some of the many types of web hosting. Choose among these available ones while selecting your web host which is appropriate for your demands and requirements.

Some common types of web hosting are mentioned below:

Shared hosting

A shared host is a server which supports many web pages. A shared host is generally the best for a business where the expenses does not permit them to go for the dedicated web hosting services, and a shared hosting helps them save a lot of unnecessary expenses as well.

Various maintenance features are provided by the service provider of the shared hosting. These include security updates, server management, anti-virus backup and server software.

There are primarily two ways of web hosting: the IP address based way and the name based way. The host who with own individual IP address provides each of the sites he hosts with their own SSL certificate in the IP address based way. Consequently, a sense of security is endowed to the websites. Various web hosts are provided with a single address in the name based hosting. Everyone uses this particular IP address.

Using a shared host might come cheap, but it comes without the sense of security that is there in IP based hosting.

There are also several other disadvantages of the name based hosting system like its incompatibility with relatively old browsers. A HTTP/1.0 browser without up gradation will fail to send out requests carrying the host name. Also because they share same digital certificates, Hand name based hosts cannot support HTPPS websites either. And if the Domain Name System or the DNS conks out any website hosted by a name based web host becomes virtually impossible to access.

CPU, disc space, and your website’s Bandwidth being affected or slowed as other sites are using the same server are the problems of a cost effective shared web hosting system. This system also puts certain system level things out of your control like scripts and the system software being used. But you can be comfortable without such features if your website is relatively small. You might want to gain knowledge about Virtual Private Sector or VPs if such things do bother you and you want some control over the things powering your website.

Virtual Private Server

The software of the divides it into many ‘virtual machines’ though it has a single server like a shared server. Each such VPS gets their own allotted RAM, disc space etc though the server’s total resources are still shared by the various websites being hosted. Using the allocated resources, each operates completely independently.

You can do various things as you are granted this much greater freedom when compared to a shared host. These different things range from running a totally different OS to having your own scripts and choice of software, without disturbing the other sites on the server.

The kind of access that you may get to the main server in case of VPS is almost similar to the kind of access that you could get in a dedicated server. The only difference is that installing software and scripts can be done at a much lower cost in the case of VPS.

Due to the internal divisions of the system of the VPS, there is more security to a website than what a shared host provides. In a shared host, if someone hacked into the main server, then every site would get affected, which is not so in case of VPS.

The server division normally occurs evenly; the websites getting an equal share of the total resources. So if a VPS server hosts a dozen of websites, then every item like RAM, disk space etc. will be shared equally among all the 12 websites.

Dedicated Server Hosting

As mentioned earlier, dedicated hosting is meant for huge concerns who wish to have sufficient control of the website in their hands. In this case, a website gets a single server for its individual capacity, thus giving webmasters total control of the website. Besides the software, all other factors like supervision of power, security, etc. is addresses by the web hosting company.

If your website requirements are large bandwidth, greater resources like disk space and if you are looking for a high quality, customized server, opting for a dedicated host seems to be the perfect solution. You can then choose a host of features for your website like operating system, settings, software and multi-media necessities. A dedicated hosting service is also the answer to all those who cannot afford to purchase a server of their own, but want similar services.

Your expenses can be saved up to 85% with a dedicated server. You may not have the financial resources and technical know-how to maintain, install and run your own IT staff but have a high traffic to your website. Then, if you can not pay for a network administrator, the programs will run everything smoothly and most of the other functions.

Using a dedicated server also offers 100% assurance and security to you, because you know that you are the only one who is using this server. Apart from security concerns, not having other sites on the server also nullifies issues about downtime problems. Companies that need to have client databases and other important information up on their sites are bound to feel much safer using a managed dedicated host which provides the client with an extra layer of data security.

While shared web hosts come cheaper, they also come with the heavy burdens of ominous security concerns and accessibility concerns if other sites face heavy traffic at any point. Using a dedicated server might cost a lot more, but provides you with the comfort and knowledge that you are using a thousand time safer server and one that shouldn’t be slowed down by traffic of other websites. A dedicated server, therefore, is perfect for those looking to expand and grow in their businesses.