What types of web hosting are there?

What types of web hosting are there?

Shared Hosting - Most websites are not huge affairs with hundreds of pages and thousands of files and graphics, and they are targeted to a particular audience, so they will not get as many visitors as the great general sites like Yahoo! that are targeted to everyone who uses the Internet. As such, the average website therefore will not need all of an entire Web server resources to run it. Web servers are designed to be able to manage dozens or hundreds of websites at once because they are powerful machines.

Shared hosting is simply the concept of hosting more than one website on a particular server. Over 95% of all websites on the Internet are running in a shared hosting environment. As the server resources can be distributed among the clients hosted on it, so can the server's operating costs, so shared hosting is universally cheaper than any other type. Shared hosting packages are generally designed so that each customer is assigned a certain amount of each resource, with different payment levels representing different amounts of resources such as disk space, bandwidth, email addresses, and so on. Shared hosting is also known as virtual hosting.

Dedicated Hosting - If you have a big powerful site that attracts many visitors and tends to monopolize the resources, then you may want to have a web server all to yourself. Some companies also prefer the added security of not having to share the server with anyone else who could do something accidentally or on purpose of the crash. Rent the use of an entire server known as dedicated hosting. The web hosting company still owns the machine and takes responsibility for the maintenance of equipment and the web hosting software, but you have more control over the configuration and use of the server. There is also such a thing as semi-dedicated hosting, where a web server is only divided among a very small number of customers, such as 2-4, with strong walls between each to prevent them from interfering with the other. Since the hosting company is still responsible for the maintenance of the server, this type of hosting is also known as managed hosting. For obvious reasons, dedicated hosting always costs more than shared hosting.

Co-Location Server - If you really want complete control over every aspect of your web server, you might very well choose to buy one and maintain it yourself if you have sufficient knowledge. However, chances are you do not have the resources to keep your server completely safe from power outages, roof leaks, thieves, unwary employees and other risks and keep it on internet a fast connection and high bandwidth at any time. You need a data center to provide those services for you. Co-location is the rental of physical security, continuous electrical power and a fast internet connection, reliable for a server you own. The data center is not responsible for any maintenance of hardware or a collocated server software, you are. This can be a cheaper alternative to dedicated hosting if you have the expertise and time to run a web server yourself.