There are several different web hosting solutions available in the market these days. The choice of hosting depends upon what your needs or requirements are. You have the option of choosing from several different web hosting solutions so it is necessary to research and evaluate the services before choosing the correct hosting solution for your website. Some of the most common web hosting solutions are described below.
Free Web Hosting
There are times when you do not think that there is a need to spend money on hosting a website. This can be the case when you are building a site as a hobby, experiment or to test a new business solution. In such a case you can look out for a free web host. A free webhost is advantageous as you do not need to spend any money to host your site. On the other hand it can be disadvantageous as storage space, bandwidth and customer support may be limited and your site may need to compulsorily host text ads, pop up and pop under ads.
Shared Web Hosting
This is the most common type of web hosting solution. In a shared web hosting environment several different web sites are hosted on a single shared server and the number of sites hosted depends entirely on your hosting provider. Though your site may be allotted separate and fixed storage space and bandwidth, it may have to share CPU time, memory, operating system, applications, etc. One of the most important things that one should consider while shopping for a shared hosting service is whether you are allowed to host certain scripts that are necessary for your website’s operations on the server and what is the uptime offered by the hosting provider.
Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS)
A virtual private server, also known as a virtual dedicated server, provides all the features of a dedicated server for multiple users in the form of virtual computers. Although in a VPS several different clients have their websites hosted on a single server, resources are never shared by clients. This is done by allocating a fixed percentage of resources to each client website, thus emulating a dedicated server hosting. This means that the resources allocated to you would always be available to you unlike in a shared environment where one website with high usage may bog down other websites by using all the resources.
Dedicated Web Hosting
Unlike a shared hosting plan were hundreds of websites may be hosted on a single server, a dedicated hosting solution allows a client to lease the complete server for his or her personal use. An advantage of using a dedicated web host is that you can host an unlimited number of websites on your server without paying for each site individually. Also the user has complete access to all the resources of the server and can decide which scripts to host on the server without any kind of restrictions. You also have the right and power to manage your own server and do as you please with the resources of the server.
Managed Web Hosting
Managed or fully managed web hosting solutions are an extension of the dedicated hosting model. The disadvantage with a dedicated hosting solution is that you are required to manage your own server. This means that you need to administer, maintain and secure your web server yourself. This can be a very difficult task and may even cause downtime problems for your website. To resolve such a situation a managed web hosting solution was introduced. With a managed web hosting solution you can get a dedicated server bundled with extra services such as reporting, monitoring, load balancing, setup, security, software update and system administration. The only thing that you need to look out for is that your hosting provider provides 24/7/365 support.
Server Co-location Web Hosting
There are some situation where dedicated or managed servers solutions are not suited to your needs. In situations like these it is possible to build your own server and put it inside the data center of a web host. This is known as server co-location web hosting. In this kind of hosting plan you buy a server from any of the hardware providers and send it to your hosting provider. Your host in turn plugs your server into its data center and provides you access to its infrastructure through remote access. You are responsible for your server and the webhost is responsible for network access. This is the most flexible, controllable and customizable hosting solution available.