It’s natural when you’re starting a new online business to question yourself about what type of web hosting solution you’ll need. We’ve all been there! And we’re going to make it easy as possible for you. Therefore in the next few segments, we’ll try to explain what types of web hosting solutions are there, highlight their positive and negative features, and help you make the decision that best fits your needs. So let’s dive in: 👇
For starters, you should know that there are three generic types of web hosting solutions out there:
One of the most significant differences that exist between them is the price, features, and freedom they’re giving. However, there are also variations between the hosting providers regarding the technical support level that they offer, the rate of uptime, the SSL certificate, etc.
It’s important to note that one of the things you should keep an eye on when choosing a hosting provider is the technical support that you’ll get. It’s crucial to get highly skilled and prompt tech support to respond and resolve your tickets anytime.
Furthermore, we can all agree that low uptime is a deal-breaker, and you should always aim for 99.99% uptime or higher. Any hosting provider offering uptime below 99.95% should be avoided. A key aspect that you need to pay attention to is what happens when the hosting provider fails to deliver the promised uptime. And yes, downtimes are inevitable. In our industry, accidents happen from various factors like power outages, internet disruption due to attacks or cut cable, etc. So how the hosting provider handles this is very important. Our policy is to compensate 100% of our client’s service on a monthly basis if his service uptime drops below 99.95%. That means that if in a given month you experience downtime of more than 21m 54s, you will be credited one extra month to your service.
Also, there are some other features that you can get. For instance, free migration, free domain name, or backup of your data, but this depends on the offer of the hosting provider.
Now, let’s see these three web hosting solutions explained.
Shared Hosting
As the name implies, shared web hosting is a type of hosting where you share the server’s performance with others. This type of web hosting is usually the most affordable one and the one with the most limited features. Depending on the hosting provider you choose, you’ll get different sizes of RAM or storage space, a different number of domains (parked or addon), subdomains, limitations on the traffic, etc. Almost every hosting provider has website traffic limitations on their shared hosting plans. However, with BlackHOST, you don’t need to worry about that! We offer UNMETERED traffic with every hosting plan, even with the cheapest one (starting from $1.95/mo).
Here are some of the benefits and limitations of choosing a shared web hosting for your project:
Pros of Choosing Shared Web Hosting
- Affordable prices;
- Managed hosting (you can host your website within a few short steps);
- Free backup.
Cons of Choosing Shared Web Hosting
- Lack of admin access;
- Usually lower performance due to other clients with whom you share resources;
- Shared resources.
If you notice that the shared hosting plan isn’t performing well as your project grows, you should upgrade it to VPS hosting.
VPS Hosting
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. This kind of hosting shares one physical dedicated server but behaves like several separate servers. Moreover, if the virtualization is made using KVM technology, you’ll have the feeling that you’re using a dedicated server. And that way, you can benefit from the resources of the VPS to the fullest.
With this kind of hosting plan, you can usually choose between different virtualization technologies, like KVM, OpenVZ, or Xen. But we need to note that if you want to choose VPS hosting, it’s good to possess some tech skills to manage and make some configurations to host your project. Especially if the VPS hosting is unmanaged. This way, you can maximize the performances that you can get, and you’ll have more freedom in choosing your own server. You can make preferred server optimizations and create custom configurations according to your project’s demands.
Like shared hosting, VPS has some pros and cons:
Pros of Choosing VPS Hosting
- Better resource isolation, even though you are sharing the same machine with multiple tenants, the resources available for your VM are dedicated to you;
- SSH or VNC access (so you can get full control of your VM);
- Free or affordable backup.
Cons of Choosing VPS Hosting
- More technical knowledge is required;
- Limited resource allocation, sometimes even the best VPS hosting plans can’t fit your project requirements.
Depending on the hosting company that you’ll choose, sometimes you can make your own server configuration. We at BlackHOST want to give our customers the freedom to choose a VPS with no predefined features. Simply select the features that best suit your needs and order the VPS that will benefit you the most. On top of that, our support team is always ready to assist you in setting up your VPS for free.
Dedicated Servers
At this type of web hosting, you’re renting the whole physical server with all the available resources, and this way, you have independence and direct access to the ISP provider. Besides, the risk of being attacked due to the vulnerabilities that bring other clients on the VPS or shared web server is low, and you don’t have to bother about the high load of the server due to other customers of the hosting company.
If your project is big and has high traffic on a daily basis, you should go with a dedicated server. Perhaps this type of hosting is a bit pricey, but it is much more powerful.
Here are the positive and negative aspects of using dedicated web servers:
Pros of Choosing a Dedicated Server
- Dedicated network interface;
- IMPI, KVM & SSH access;
- Full hardware control, which gives you great freedom, e.g., setting up a RAID configuration.
Cons of Choosing a Dedicated Server
- Higher pricing.
So let’s sum it up!
If you’re starting a small business, and have a small project, maybe it’s best to try some of the Shared Web Hosting packages. Plus, you can save money and time in managing the hosting.
When you have more than one website or maybe one project with a high website traffic level and yet can’t afford a dedicated server, you should go with VPS hosting.
And if you own a big project where independence is above all, you should go with a Dedicated Server.
Lastly, you need to keep in mind that whichever plan you choose, if your project gets bigger or gets more traffic, you can always upgrade your hosting plan. Or you can transfer your project to a server with better performance to a point where vertical scaling will no longer be acceptable or possible.
When this comes, you should consider horizontally scaling your app. This means distributing your app between multiple VPS or dedicated servers connected in some kind of cluster or cloud. We have a team specialized in creating and managing custom scalable and high-availability solutions. Whether you need to scale up your WordPress site or your enterprise custom service, we can offer you the right solution, all you need to do is contact our support team, and we will take care of the rest.
