The Different Website Hosting Options Available to You

Most people don’t think twice about website hosting. In fact, most people probably don’t know anything about it or that there are several different options to pick from when it comes to selecting not only a host provider but the type of hosting itself.

Hosting is a big business, as every single website on the planet needs to be hosted. There are options that are as affordable as $3 per month, or you can pay several hundred dollars a month for a more custom solution.

Now, if you are a large software company that has millions of users, your hosting bill might run into the six-figured depending on how much server space you are occupying. Here are the most common options available.

Shared Hosting

This is considered beginner and entry level hosting. A new blog or a new website can use this to get up and running while keeping operational costs down. Local service companies like a HVAC maintenance company will receive less traffic than a popular consumer brand with worldwide traffic.

Shared hosting is a nice affordable option for someone just starting out with light traffic numbers,” says Tony Rush of custom subwoofer box website HiFi Sound Connection. “As traffic increases you will want to look at something a little more customizable.”

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

A VPS gives you a little more power and room to grow as well as access to more featured on the server. This is a good option for a growing website that has decent traffic number, yet still want to keep costs down.

You can get a good VPS for about $30 to $50 per month. They are also good to use for running pieces of software and tools on.

If you are running a remote team and have some team members at a development outsourcing company running marketing or automation tools for your business, then you will want to host them on a VPS to allow everyone easy access.

Dedicated Server

Now, once your website is booming and your traffic number are consistent and growing, you will want to look into your own dedicated server. This means you own it — your website and files are the only ones that sit on it, giving you full control over it and full management.

“If you are running a lot of paid traffic then a dedicated server is a smart investment as you never have to worry about someone else on the server causing it to crash,” says Chris Moberg of Slumber Search.

With shared hosting, you are sitting on the same server with hundreds of other websites. If they are attacked or run a plugin that slows them down the entire server can be impacted. With a dedicated setup you don’t ever have to worry about that.

Cloud Hosting (AWS)

Could hosting is for those that need a solution that will scale to infinity. For example, a website like Facebook will use this so they can just keep growing with no limitations.

The drawback to this is the cost. This can get very expensive, but those that use this type of setup are usually large companies making a lot of money.