If you aren’t very clued up on tech, then web hosting can seem like a pretty complicated topic. The chances are that like many others, you’ve decided you want to start a website and before you knew it you were being bombarded with words like Cloud, WordPress, Server, and Host, which all meant nothing to you, leaving you confused. With money at play, it’s only understandable that you want to make sure that you know your options before parting with your cash, so here’s a quick article to help you get your head around web hosting
So what is web hosting?
When you put a website or web page onto the internet it needs to live somewhere and web-hosting simply refers to this service. Web hosting service providers own the equipment and technologies required to store and house your webpage so that it can be shown to those looking to view it on the internet.
Are there different types of web hosting?
Yes, when it comes to finding your website somewhere to live, there are a couple of different options open to you including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting. Let’s look at those in a little more detail.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is exactly what it says on the tin. With shared hosting your website will live on a server with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other websites all sharing the same space and resources. The biggest advantage of shared hosting is that it is often one of the cheapest options, with the server costs being shared between multiple sites, but the shared aspect of shared hosting is also its biggest disadvantage, with finite resources needing to be shared amongst all parties.
VPS hosting
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and is very similar to shared hosting but with one key difference. Unlike the servers in shared hosting, Virtual Private Servers are set up differently meaning that resources are split equally and no single site can suck the resources away from another. VPS hosting usually means sharing with significantly fewer people, usually between 10 and 50, and because each client has their own little private portion of the server they also have more flexibility when it comes to their setup.
Dedicated hosting
Lastly, for those who want their space all to themselves, there’s dedicated hosting which simply means that you have the server all to yourself. Understandably this is the most versatile option but it is also the most expensive and so is only really used by huge companies.
Cloud hosting
Last but not least, the latest type of hosting is called cloud hosting which is essentially the same as VPS hosting except rather than your website living on one server, it can live virtually across a network. This provides you with extreme scalability possibilities as well as access to more resources. If you have a WordPress site then you can read more about WordPress-cloud hosting in this review – Hostgator WordPress hosting.
So there you have it, the basics of web hosting explained. As you can see, although many web hosting businesses use big and complex words they’re really talking about the same thing. We hope you found this helpful!
