When working with and setting up your website you will need to decide on a hosting provider. Hopefully the two of you will have a happy relationship but make sure that you have an understanding of everything involved before agreeing to a plan. Below you will find descriptions of the most popular forms of web hosting as well as some pointers on what to look for in the various hosting plans.
Shared Hosting - The Affordable Plan
If you run a small online business website or a personal site you will in most cases get sufficient web hosting through a shared hosting plan. This is without a doubt the most popular form of web hosting today and one good reason for this is the fact that you will get strong and reliable hosting for only a couple of dollars per month. When searching for a web host that is providing shared hosting there are a few things that you should look for in advance. Make sure that you will get enough disk space, bandwidth and that they do not suffer from poor uptime. The uptime can be checked via an online uptime monitor.
Dedicated Hosting - The Rolls Royce
If you know that your site will attract a lot of visitors on a daily basis you better also have hosting that can handle it. If not, you can count on your website being slow or in worst case scenario, come crashing down. To give you a very basic definition, dedicated hosting is when you and your business will have a server that is entirely for your business. Thankfully you will not have to make any room for the server as it will be stored in a secure place by your hosting provider. Depending on your level of expertise you will be able to choose between managed, which means you will have the content to look after but not much else, and unmanaged hosting. Now, just because the hosting is dedicated it does not have to mean it will cost a fortune. Quality dedicated hosting will usually cost you between $60 and $200 per month which is not much considering the power of the solution you will get.
VPS Hosting - That Thing In-Between
Perhaps your site will get a substantial amount of traffic but not to the amount that you are in need of dedicated hosting. If this is the case you will probably be satisfied with VPS Hosting. VPS will give you a powerful and stable hosting solution that is more customizable than shared web hosting. Things to look for in Virtual Private Server plans are lots of RAM, monthly transfer, disk space, good customer support and unlimited add-on domains.
Green Hosting - For a Clean Conscience
The earth is not getting any healthier, at least not without our help, and that is why many web hosting providers have started to take their responsibility in offering web hosting that can be classified as "green". Green hosting usually means that the web host either purchases carbon offsets or that they use eco-friendly energy sufficient servers. Green hosting can be found in all forms of web hosting but the most common thing is to find it among the shared web hosting providers. When it comes to the plans they should be equally strong and feature-packed as any other hosting plan. If they are lacking a feature simply pick another web host as there are many green hosting options available in all price ranges which should meet your needs.
Cloud Computing - The Trendy Hosting
Cloud computing is something that has grown in popularity the last year or so and it is really something out of the ordinary. This form of hosting is a great solution for everyone that at times need their hosting to be somewhat stronger (for instance when an article gets Digged) and at other times just needs it to be very basic. A great benefit with cloud computing is that you do not pay for more hosting than you are using.
