Different Types of Web Hosting Services

People that want to create websites have to first think about what service or company they are going to get to host the site. But to do this they first have to evaluate the different types of web hosting service available and then make a decision based on whether these particular services meet with their current requirements. As it stands, there are four different kinds of services offered by web hosts today, each having their own particular advantages and disadvantages. The right one for your own particular requirements will depend largely on the specific needs of the website you want to host on them. Here is a rundown of each type of service.

The first type to look at are the free web hosting services. These are more popular for personal types of websites and the main advantage of these is fact that they are free, so no hosting charges are applicable to you as well as no domain registration or any other type of fees. In a nutshell, the website will be totally free of charge. There are downsides or disadvantages to this type of hosting though, with the main one being the fact that you will not have much control over what happens to your website. Templates offered by this type of hosting are limited, and you will always find yourself working within disk space and bandwidth constraints. Also, you will find that your site will not have its own dedicated name, for example, www.yoursite.com. Instead it will be something like www.webhostingservicename.yourchoiceofname.com.

Another type of web hosting you could take a look, and one that is probably the most popular around as well, is shared web hosting. What this means is that you basically pay to use a share of a main server which is located in the web hosting company’s data server centre somewhere. Fees are usually low, costing only a few pounds or dollars per month, and you will also have your very own domain name as well. More often than not, you will usually have the ability to upgrade at a future date should it be required.

Downsides include some companies offering limited storage space and bandwidth, as well as having to share the server with countless other sites. Because of this there could be privacy or security risks involved. Shared servers are not ideal for ecommerce ventures.

Next on the list is the dedicated server. This type of hosting means that only your site will be on this server and you will have plenty of bandwidth and storage to play with, while security and privacy will not be an issue. The cost is the downside though as you will be paying for an entire server.

Finally, there is the collocated server. This type of web hosting means that you will personally have to provide the server, while the web hosting company will locate it in their server centre, meaning you benefit from security, uptime, and sometimes, maintenance.

At the end of the day, deciding which is the right choice for you will boil down to what your website requires and the money this will cost.