What Is Hosting And How Does Web Hosting Work?
In short, web hosting is a service that stores website’s data on the internet. Think of it as an apartment renter – you pay a monthly (or yearly) fee, to live and store your things in their property.
This is exactly what a hosting provider does. They rent out a server for people to store and run their website data in.
Depending on your needs and technical knowledge, you can choose between a couple of different types of hosting.
Different Types of Web Hosting
Web hosting companies typically offer several hosting plans such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting, and cloud hosting.
Shared hosting refers to a setup where many sites are all hosted together on the same server. This hosting plan is best for beginners and those, who don’t need a lot of resources.
Pros:
- The resources are split among the clients, this helps keep costs low
- It allows users to personally maintain their site
Cons:
- Traffic spikes can disrupt every site hosted in that server
- You don’t get the freedom to fine-tune various settings as you would with your own server
VPS Hosting
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) simulates multiple individual servers partitioned on one central server. It gives you more control and power, however, to manage VPS hosting, you need advanced knowledge.
Pros:
- Dedicated amount of resources per user
Cons:
- Hard to manage
- No support
- Steeper price tag
Dedicated Server
This plan is when you rent out the entire server for yourself. It is like owning a house. Dedicated Servers are best for business’ sites that require high performance and loads of resources.
Pros:
- The highest level of resources
- An unparalleled degree of freedom
Cons:
- The most expensive plan for web hosting
- Requires a lot of technical knowledge
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a team of servers working together to provide hosting. It is the best combination of shared and VPS hosting plans.
Pros:
- Allows multiple computers to handle high traffic websites
- Cheaper than a dedicated server
Cons:
- Usually doesn’t have access to the root directory
- The configuration file (php.ini) is not available