Understanding Web Hosting Server Types: An Introduction Guide

The need for a website for your company is crucial, regardless of the size or how small it may be. Even if you’ve got physical stores, having your business online can bring amazing benefits, as it allows you to showcase your services and products globally.

To create websites requires a web hosting service. If you’ve determined to create a website, the first thing you’ll be thinking about is what web hosting provider to pick since there are many options available.

Why is it that choosing an online hosting service really that important?

Web hosting is the basis for what type of website you create the performance of your site, how reliable it is as well as whether it’s secure not, and other things crucial to a successful website.

Therefore, it’s important to know all you can about web hosting prior to deciding on one. In this article I’ll take you through the web hosting world as well as its various types and the best alternatives you can choose from for each type of hosting to assist you in choosing the right one for your company.

Why put off? Let’s go!

What is Web Hosting?

Webhosting is form of hosting service that is available online, that allows both individuals and businesses to have their sites online and accessible via the internet.

Simply put, every site needs a web hosting service to lease a space on the internet to keep all the information on your website and then make it live. Companies that offer web hosting services are referred to as web hosts who provide space for websites on servers which is owned or leased by clients to use.

Examples: Bluehost, SiteGround, Kinsta, A2Hosting, etc.

You can lease this space to create your website with the help they provide. Additionally, they provide Internet connectivity as well as webspace for different servers within their global data centers.

These servers assist in bringing your content online, while also handling the traffic on your website. Additionally, the components of your website (such as videos, text images, files etc.).) are saved on their servers which you are able to access through the web hosting service.

Types of Web Hosting

When your website expands and your needs increase, so do your requirements. This is the reason why a variety of web hosting services are offered on the market, offering different plans and offerings like the flexibility of resources, control options pricing structures, etc. They are available for rent starting from a few dollars per month, up to thousands of dollars.

So, you must be aware of the options available on the market for web hosting prior to picking one, as it will be completely based on your requirements and your budget.

So, let’s talk about the primary kinds of hosting on the web.

1. Shared Hosting

Like the name implies, websites using shared hosting share the same server hundreds or a few other websites. They share resources such as bandwidth, RAM and storage as well as CPU on one server. This is the reason shared hosting costs a lot less when compared to different web-hosting services.

However, shared hosting has basic functions and isn’t always adaptable to software updates or updates. Because resources are distributed across multiple sites, each will have a limited amount of resources, depending on the hosting plan.

It’s similar to renting a home with roommates. Even though you have your own bedroom, you must share the facilities and resources such as water and electricity with your roommates.

Advantages

• It’s easy to set-up and includes an already-configured server
• It is not necessary to have to have technical skills
• Excellent site management features
• Provides a variety of additional services like free domain names, SSL certificate, website builder similar to WordPress security options including auto-backups and control panel and many more.
• Cost-effective and available for $5 per month or less

Disadvantages

• Provides limited resources like bandwidth, storage space CPU, RAM, etc.
• Performance is not as good in the event of traffic spikes
• It doesn’t scale according to the demands of customers.
• Page loading and uptime are low, as is the downtime. speed
• Only supports a handful of programming languages like PHP
• Plans that offer the highest rates require that you choose the plan for more than one calendar year.

shared hosting is the best for:

It is best for smaller sites or those who are creating their website in the beginning. It’ll provide you with all the essential features and the essential tools to begin and go in the right direction, and you can increase the size of your site over time. It’s also suitable for those who are on a budget since it’s not expensive and you can begin the site even if you don’t have any technical knowledge.

If you’re a blogger or run an e-commerce company, shared hosting could help you. Simply put, websites that are low in traffic, for instance, less than 5k-10k, which don’t require heavy resources, could go with it.

An excellent instance of hosting shared:

SiteGround

SiteGround is among the top web hosting companies with a wide range of hosting options that include shared hosting. WordPress has officially endorsed it, therefore, if you’re looking to develop a less specialized WordPress hosting, you’ll be perfectly content with SiteGround.

Affirmed by over 2 millions of domain holders, their support staff is highly rated. They are available 24/7 available and are multi-skilled efficient, and quick. You can select a site builder among Weebly as well as WordPress or eCommerce options like WooCommerce, OpenCart, or Prestashop.

If your website was hosted somewhere else, transfer it to SiteGround at no cost. Additionally, you get a variety of free services, including an SSL certificate issued by Let’s Encrypt daily backups as well as caching, CDN, unlimited databases, email and much many more.

SiteGround is designed for CRM as well as CMS applications that are built upon PHP as well as MySQL and provides free installation of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more.

You will experience ultra-fast performance through SSD-based storage, customized speed optimizations, top security, simple administration of domains and websites and reliable email service using SpamExperts security.

They provide 3 pricing options:

• Start: $4.99/month for 1 site with 10k visits, as well as 10GB of space
• GrowBig: $7.99/month for unlimited sites, 25k visitsand 20GB of storage
• $14.99/month Unlimited sites 100k visits per month, 40GB of space
• Each plan comes with the 30-day money-back guarantee and.

2. Dedicated Server Hosting (Bare Metal)

You are in complete control of your server when you use hosted server dedicated, however you do not control it. It grants you access to root to your website, and you won’t share your resources with any other person. Thus, you can enjoy higher speed of loading, faster uptime, and overall performance.

In total control of the server configurations you are able to install any program, modify settings, and experiment with other things. You will have more options, flexibility and powerful tools for your website.

Additionally dedicated hosting can be expensive and can cost hundreds of dollars per month.

Advantages

• Complete server control to make it work however you like
• Scalability according to the need
• High-quality performance, high uptime and speed of loading pages
• More privacy and security
• There is no interference with other websites insofar as you don’t share resources

Disadvantages

• Expensive
• It requires regular maintenance
• Hosting that is not managed requires technical expertise
• The best dedicated server hosting is for:

dedicated server hosting is perfect for websites with a high-end design and businesses that require high performance security, security, and scaling. Websites that receive more than 100k visits that generate a lot of revenue are able to opt for this type of hosting. It can also be advantageous for eCommerce sites, finance-based websites gaming, medical websites as well as gaming websites that require high levels of security and privacy for their information.

You may skip it in the case that you are expanding your sites and you have only a few thousand visits per month, because it might not provide an investment that will yield a decent return for you.

Dedicated hosting comes in two kinds of hosting: managed and managed but not managed.

Managed Dedicated Server Hosting

With hosted dedicated servers that are managed, you do not need to manage the infrastructure of the server, its tools, optimization of performance maintenance, patching and so on. Therefore, even if do not have the technical skills you can select to let the web hosting provider manage your entire website for you.

A great instance of managed hosting dedicated servers:

Liquid Web

If you’re in search of high-end security and performance that will enhance your website’s traffic You can opt for hosted dedicated server hosting managed by Liquid Web. They provide fully customizable hosting that guarantees 100% uptime for the network as well as real-time monitors.

It’s compatible with Windows and Linux operating systems, and comes with security options such as ServerSecure, as well as Proactive Sonar Monitor. Liquid Web offers single and dual-processor servers. Additionally, their staff is always available to reduce risks and improve the performance of your website.

You receive DDoS protection to protect your site and server from cyberattacks, Cloudflare CDN to speed the speed of delivery of content, a second drive to backup data and control panels such cPanel, Plesk, or Interworx to manage your site. Additionally, you will get IPMI access to control your server remotely with root access, a an assigned IP address and SSD storage for speedy performance.

Liquid Web has several pricing plans, starting at $169 per month (billed each year) for 4 CPU cores,16 5TB bandwidth 2 SSDs and 1 SATA backup disk and 250 GB of Acronis Cyber backups.

Unmanaged or Self-Managed Dedicated Server Hosting

If you choose to go with self-managed or unmanaged dedicated server hosting, you will be accountable for the installation of an operating system. This includes including crucial tools to operate the site as well as monitoring the site for security, managing its performance, and much more. It’s less expensive than dedicated server hosting managed.

An excellent example of a dedicated server that is not managed hosting:

OVHcloud

The OVHcloud Rise collection is the most economical service for servers made of bare metal. These servers are built on the strong Intel platform as well as Intel Xeon processors for high performance.

It’s suitable for large-scale websites, businesses steaming platforms, and is optimized for configuration and 500 Mbps of bandwidth for typical applications. They also provide DDoS security with high speed and uptime as well as global availability.

You can pick among a variety of OSs via the OVHcloud Control Panel and let them configure your server on behalf of you. Additionally, you can choose cPanel and Plesk to manage sites as well as databases and email servers. They provide features such as IPv6 as well as IPv4 accounts, 99.90% service uptime and much other features.

They have 3 pricing plans within the Rise price range, starting at $65.55/month with 32 GB of memory, SATA and NVMe storage and 9 data center sites.

3. Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Virtual Dedicated Servers may also be known as Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Imagine it as an enhanced form of shared hosting. With this hosting, a physical server is divided practically into multiple sections. Each VPS or section can function as an entire system that caters to the specific site.

Due to this isolation, you will benefit from greater speed and security. Additionally, you will have dedicated server resources and have its configuration control.

You could consider comparing the renting of an VPS to leasing an apartment within the building complex. There is no need to share the amenities or resources dedicated to your home with other people.

This means more privacy, flexibility and the freedom to use your space. You may also have to share certain resources, such as pools, parks or other facilities. With other residents within the building.

Advantages

• You get dedicated resources
• Uptime and high performance
• The ability to modify server configurations
• Software installation and root access of your preference
• Much less expensive than dedicated hosting

Disadvantages

• A little more complicated to setup than shared hosting.
• You will still share the server with other users.
• Limitations to server control

VPS is the best choice for:

VPS hosting is a great choice for small and medium-sized enterprises that require solid websites, excellent performance and a higher level of uptime.

It can also benefit those who have exceeded the resources offered by shared hosting. It can be a good option it in case you need to modify server settings or handle massive, complicated files.

As with dedicated server hosting VPS hosting can be divided into two kinds namely managed and non-managed (or self-managed).

Managed VPS

You will be able to save time and avoid the headaches of managing your website entirely by choosing the managed VPS hosting. A great illustration that shows Managed VPS hosting includes:

ScalaHosting

Select your plan, the setting, and location, and then start an entirely-managed VPS server in less than 2 minutes with ScalaHosting. You can select the cloud service you prefer to make management easier and provide custom solutions to improve the speed of your site, its security, and reliability.

ScalaHosting has been in the industry for over 11 years and has 700k+ customers in over 120 countries. They operate enterprise-grade data centers located in more than 10 locations, and their most recent innovation SPanel is a powerful control panel for managing VPS.

You will receive SShield security that guards your website 24/7 and stops 99.98 percent of all online attacks. If you’re using WordPress and WordPress, you’ll profit from the SWordPress Manager, which makes it easy to manage your CMS administration, from site replication, restores backups and cloning to managing the site’s security and increasing security.

ScalaHosting also provides FREE website migration with no downtime, 100percent SSD-based storage 99.99 percent uptime for websites and a 30 day money-back guarantee on every plan. There are four pricing plans available beginning at $9.95/month with unlimited bandwidth. 1-core CPU, 50GB SSD, and 2GB RAM.

Unmanaged VPS

If you’re looking to handle managing your website, go with non-managed and self-managed VPS hosting, which is less expensive than fully controlled VPS hosting. A2 Hosting is an ideal option for this kind of hosting.

A2 Hosting

Enjoy the savings of shared hosting, but with the improved control and the performance of dedicated hosting through A2 Hosting’s VPS hosting that is not managed by the company. service.

The Turbo plans are even more performance and speed, with 20 times faster servers, which will assist you with improving SEO ranking, increased conversions and lower bounce rates.

A2 Hosting guarantees 99.90 percent service uptime. They also offer Guru Crew support, continuous security of your website as well as a 30 day guarantee of money back. Additionally, they offer the option of customizing your VPS to meet your requirements using Linux operating system. You can also select the versions that include CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu.

You are granted administrative access in order to run and install any application that you wish to and to perform boot, restart and shutdown control. They also give you the option of adding cPanel as well as Softaculous and to create WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, Prestashop, and more. You also have the option of choosing the location of your data center.

They provide your VPS using their fine-tuned SwiftServer platform that comes with SSD. If you prefer, you can select the Turbo Boost VPS for even greater performance and stability, handling connections more efficiently and faster and also the ability to support SPDY & Edge Side Includes (ESI) and HTTP/2.

They have several pricing plans beginning at $4.99/month (billed at the end of three years).

4. Managed Hosting Platform

Managed hosting is one type of hosting services hosts can manage your website’s management and maintenance so that you can focus building your website instead of completing these tasks.

Imagine managing web hosting like renting an apartment, with the building maintenance and cleaning costs.

Your web hosting provider will manage security updates, software updates backups, security monitoring, and other. They will provide you with hosting plans, regular maintenance and management of your hardware, and support for infrastructure. Managed hosting can be found in various kinds:

• Managed shared hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting
• Managed VPS hosting
• Managed dedicated hosting
• Cloud hosting managed by a professional

Managed Hosting works ideal for:

Managed hosting can help grow small and medium-sized websites that don’t have an in-house IT personnel and resources. It’s also suitable for larger companies who wish to guarantee a the standard setup and installation for web-based applications, as well as expand storage and recovery, backups and reduce latency.

A case study that shows controlled WordPress hosting:

Kinsta

Kinsta offers top-quality managed WordPress hosting. They take charge of everything using the latest technology and superior support. Kinsta has more than 10 years of experience with WordPress hosting, and adhere to a speed-obsessed structure.

They are equipped with the latest technologies like Nginx, LXD containers, PHP 8.0 and optimized virtual machines, and MariaDB to provide super-fast performance and high availability, resource isolation and automatic scaling.

You will have a very safe network using Cloudflare’s firewall. It also comes with free DDoS protection as well as regular uptime monitoring SSL support as well as hardware-based firewalls.

They make use of the most recent technologies and frameworks as well as Google Cloud Platform with 27 global data centers that provide the best performance while minimizing delays and hops.

Additionally, you can enjoy the option of free migrations to your site, routine check-ups on uptime, hack-fix guarantees Backups MyKinsta dashboardand automatic scaling. much more.

The WordPress-managed hosting costs start at $35/month , which includes 1 site with 25k visits, no SSL and CDN and 10GB storage space.

A case study of managed hosting that is used for multiple CMS:

Nexcess

Nexcess provides an optimized and fully managed web hosting service that is designed for increased capacity as well as security and speed. It can be used with various CMS that include WordPress, WooCommerce, StoreBuilder, Magento, Drupal, Craft CMS, and ExpressionEngine.

They also provide FREE website migration services, auto-scaling with one click, 99.99% uptime, and PHP optimization and assistance.

Additionally, it safeguards your site by monitoring it 24/7 and alerts and high-end SSL certificate, PCI compliance, and proactive patches and updates.

It allows instant storage of assets, container add-ons that automatically update the update of plug-ins and platforms and a stack of technology that can be customized to improve performance.

The price starts at $9.50/month There’s also an all-day backup, a staging environment and an unlimited number of email addresses.

5. Cloud Hosting

Cloud computing’s rise has increased the need in cloud hosting. This kind of web hosting is an array of load-balanced servers instead of one physical server.

It gives you high scalability capacity, and reliability, as it keeps supporting your website even when one server is down and another will take over.

There are many reasons for cloud hosting to be growing in popularity these days in comparison to traditional hosting.

Advantages

• High performance, reliability, and security
• Capability to scale up and down according to the need
• More flexible and more reliable
• It won’t cause any problems in the event of power shortages or natural disasters.
• Cost-effective as it is a requirement to pay the exact services you require.

Disadvantages

• Customization limits
• intricate pricing structure, which can be increased the cost of traffic that is unpredictable

Cloud Hosting is best for:

Cloud hosting is well for large and medium-sized enterprises. It is also advantageous if you experience unpredictability in your website traffic and plan to increase it. If you’re already using shared hosting and are now outgrowing the resources available, you can immediately switch into cloud-based hosting.

There are numerous cloud hosting options to choose from including AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Azure, etc. If you’re not experienced in managing cloud servers however, you are able to make use of them with a managed cloud hosting platforms.

A good example of a Cloud hosting managed by a platform

Cloudways

Enjoy an unrivaled cloud hosting experience by using Cloudways which offers cloud hosting that is managed. Cloudways is able to handle everything, which means you can focus on building your business faster. It is compatible with all PHP applications and control panels, as well as automatic backups, as well as multiple cloud providers.

In addition, you receive automated securityand auto-healing server an optimized stack of technology, and unlimitted app support. It is possible to set everything up quickly, design and manage apps efficiently and collaborate with others.

They also provide free migration with ironclad security, top-speed performance, higher scalability, no lock-in options, etc.

Their prices start at $10 per month with a trial for free.

Conclusion

Web hosting is the base of the website you’re building. It should provide you with enough resources, such as bandwidth and RAM, CPU storage and so on. With a high performance, scalability, as well as security to allow you to expand your business.

So, select a web hosting provider that will offer these features in order to create the kind of website your visitors would love. Finally, choose web hosting according to your needs for your business, the use and budget.