Most website hosting providers will offer various types of pre configured or custom hosting packages and each will vary in their cost and options.
What you will require for your hosting will largely depend on the specific requirements for your website and the number of users who will require access. The following items provide an overview of the various hosting packages you will need to consider:
Shared Hosting
This is the option which most people will use when creating a website for a blog, new start up or small business and provides an affordable option to host your website.
With shared hosting, the website hosting provider will share the hosting of your website with other websites, sharing the resources which are available on the web server, in turn sharing the costs.
You are not able to view the other websites which are using the same shared resources as they are not able to view yours. Instead, the website hosting company will provide you with a separate, allocated secure area on the web server to host your website.
VPS Hosting
A Virtual Private Server or VPS is similar to a shared hosting package except that a VPS has it's own dedicated partition of a web server with it's own guaranteed resources. Like any other computer, this would include an allocated amount of memory, storage, processing power or bandwidth being made available as part of the VPS package.
As a customer or tenant, you will also be able to configure your own server software to operate your own apps and customisations. A website developer or IT professional will be able to advise you on this and setup the hosting environment to allocate the required resources for your website.
Dedicated Hosting
Having a dedicated hosting package simply means that you have the full resources of a web server to suit your own requirements, effectively leasing a physical web server from your hosting provider.
As a customer or tenant using a dedicated hosting package, you would have access which is similar to a VPS except that you will not be sharing the server with other websites or apps. A dedicated hosting package will provide you with the services which are required for a high demand, enterprise grade website which may have thousands of users with the technical support and expertise to manage it.
Cloud Hosting
By using a cloud hosting service, rather than hosting a website or app on a single server, the hosting is spread across several interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, flexible, scalable and reliable web infrastructure.
Cloud hosting is an effective method of running a website with resource-intensive applications or a large amount of files, images and videos. While providing a reliable solution to accommodate for traffic spikes or seasonal demands, it also provides the potential for an infinite amount of storage and increased reliability as the hosting services are spread across multiple servers.
The various types of hosting and the packages which will be made available will be different with each provider.
If you require further help and advice with setting up or changing your hosting package, you can speak with us today by asking a question or making a support request.