Choosing the right web hosting option for a business can be a daunting task for anyone that doesn’t know their cPanel from their Softaculous. With so many different options available, it can be easy to overpay for services that you don’t actually need.
To help make the picture a little clearer, we’ve come up with a rundown of five of the most common web hosting options and which type of business they’re best suited to.
1 – Shared Hosting
Best for community groups, 1-10 person-sized businesses, bloggers, stay-at-home mums/dads
This is the cheapest option available and is perfect for anyone looking to dip their toes into web hosting. As an “entry-level” option, your website would be stored on the same server as hundreds or thousands of other sites, sharing the same Random Access Memory (RAM (News - Alert)) and Control Processing Unit (CPU).
While that helps bring down the costs, it does come with its own drawbacks. If a website on the same server was to suddenly attract a huge surge in traffic, for example, it could impact the loading speed of web pages on your own site.
On the upside, you don’t require any special knowledge to use a shared hosting package and it nearly always comes with a customer-friendly control panel that makes it easy to update a site without the need for assistance.
2 – Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
Best for small-sized businesses
A VPS is a bridge between shared and dedicated server hosting. It offers users greater control than shared hosting, with root access allowing for the installation of specific scripts, software, and modules that can help make a website stand out from the competition from a design point of view.
It is, however, still hosted on a shared network. As such, spikes in traffic on other sites on the same network can lead to performance issues.
Using a VPS to its full potential does require some technical know-how. A business owner uncomfortable with technology, for example, would be best sticking to the constraints of a shared hosting package or hiring someone to run the website on their behalf.
3 – Dedicated Server Hosting
Best for medium to large-sized businesses, online forums, e-commerce sites
Companies that attract high numbers of visitors to their site on a daily basis are often advised to choose a dedicated server for their hosting. This means that the server is rented solely by one user and is run through a dedicated powerful machine.
Such an option guarantees performance, with system resources such as processing capacity, disk space, and memory all working in unison to help power one site.
The server owner also has full control over the site, running everything from its security through to choosing its operating system.
All of this, predictably, comes with a rather large price tag (News - Alert) in comparison with other hosting options.
4 – Cloud Hosting
Best for small to large-sized businesses, online forums, e-commerce sites
Cloud hosting works by splitting a website’s hosting across multiple servers. One of the main advantages of such an approach is that hosting resources, such as RAM and CPU, can be scaled up or down depending on demand without affecting performance.
Another key selling point is its reliability. While other hosting methods that rely on a single server are susceptible to sporadic downtime, website’s using cloud hosting can automatically switch to another server on the cloud to ensure that it stays online.
5 – Colocation
Best for small to large-sized businesses, online forums, e-commerce sites
Colocation centers offer the rental of hosting equipment in a secure facility. Visually speaking, they’re the racks and cabinets with cables galore that you’ve probably seen on television or at the movie theatre.
The main benefit of choosing colocation for your hosting is that it can provide much faster transfer of data between two points than a normal office server and all at a much lower cost.
On the flip side of the coin, users that choose colocation are left to take care of everything from hardware through to software.
