In today’s day and age if you have a business, a website is a must. Not only do you increase the scope and reach of your work, you also end up networking and getting clients from all over the globe (who does not want that). But when it comes to making a website and maintaining it, many people do fall back either due to lack of knowledge on how to go about it, or just afraid it would cost a fortune to make one. Plus the added trouble of who to host it with and the eternal battle of whether or not to self-host your website. If you are having conflicting debates about web-hosting in your head, we are about to spill the beans on web hosting right here.
Free hosting
This is probably one of the simplest hosting options out there. As the name suggests, this hosting option won’t cost you a dime, and are generally maintained and provided by Content Management Sites (CMS) – Blogger, WordPress, etc. These companies make attractive hosting options for bloggers and small scale websites, that don’t want to deal with the day to day maintenance or the technicality except for the content of the site. Free hosting options are also great if you are just starting off and are looking to test the waters before diving into it completely. However the sites may run slow and have a lot of ads that are not really related to your content, making it a little frustrating at times.
Shared Hosting
As the name suggests, shared hosting brings together smaller websites that are looking to host a server for a shared cost. Shared hosting does cost a basic fee, and that varies from server to server, but these costs are the bare minimum. With a small fee you can host your site and adraw a healthy traffic to your way. Shared hosting allows you more technical freedom that you don’t get with free hosting your site, you can make small changes, put on plugins, payment options and a lot more. The only problem with shared hosting is when a site on the server sees a sudden surge in traffic, chances are that the server may not be equipped with handling the load and that could affect your site or vice versa.
VPS or Virtual Private Server Hosting
If you are looking to get even more control over your site, we suggest the VPS or the Virtual Private Server hosting option. VPS are a step up from the shared hosting space, but never the less, the space is still shared, which does not “sky rocket” the pricing. Even though they are shared the servers have a private space for itself, making it relatively secluded unlike the shared hosting option. VPS give you even more control on your site, which means you will have to hire a systems administrator or learn those skills yourself to handle your website one a VPS. If you are looking for an option between shared hosting a taking a dedicated server, a VPS is your best bet.
Cloud servers
Clouds have been a rage in the computing world and for good reason. It has managed to innovatively solve a lot of issues with computing, networking, storage and much more, hosting included. Cloud severs are great if you are looking for a secure, trustworthy server that you can access from any corner of the world, with an internet connection. Clouds consist of many individual servers that come together to host many websites at the same time. Clouds offer a secure network that is capable of handling larger volume and can buffer against turbulent traffic as well. Disadvantages though, they are way too expensive and hardly give any root access.
Dedicated servers
This is what it all leads up to, a single server that is dedicated to pump in all the life you website needs. You have access to every little detail down to the machinery that helps run the whole show, and it goes without saying, it will cost a bomb, so until you are probably a leading website in your domain, you can steer clear from it. But if you do have the capacity and need to host your site on a dedicated server make sure you have loads of cash and a good team to handle the show.
