Web Hosting for Small Businesses: Discuss the different types of web hosting solutions available

Nowadays even most of the smallest businesses have some form of web presence, and in many cases, this is presented by a website. If you are going to launch a business website, what you will need is to find the right hosting solution at the right location – to rent VPS Сanada for example. If you are a beginner, however, this search for the right hosting solution may be a bit confusing. In today’s article, we want to explore the common types of hosting to help you understand which will be the optimal one for your small business.

What are hosting types?

While managing a website may eventually need a lot of different services – like Searchbug, for example – the primary service you have to deal with is hosting and in particular the type of hosting. The main hosting types you are likely to encounter across different providers are dedicated hosting, shared hosting, virtual private hosting, and cloud hosting. Voxfor’s hosting plans can be beneficial in particular cases, therefore it’s essential to have an idea of what each individual type is to find the right one for your particular case.

Dedicated hosting

A server is the basic unit of hosting and a dedicated server is this unit that is fully reserver to a single user. This means that the user gets all the resources of the server with the maximum stability and reliability possible. A dedicated server may be a good solution for medium-to-large scale projects that deal with a lot of data, big websites with dozens of pages, hundreds of daily visitors, etc. If you’re looking for a more budget-friendly alternative with some level of dedicated resources, VDS servers can be a suitable option. However, if your business is small, the capacities of a dedicated server may be redundant for you while the price tag too high. In this case, it may be more reasonable to consider other hosting options.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the hosting type that is based on sharing a server between many different users with different projects. In contrast to a dedicated server, this solution is by default cheap and affordable even to the smallest business.

The Problem with shared hosting is that it doesn’t give you a great deal of stability and reliability, since the hosting tenants may occasionally “fight” for resources, so you won’t opt for it with a resource-intensive project. The security of shared hosting tenants may also be compromised more easily since the tenants share the same virtual environment and if one website gets hacked, the cybercriminal gets access to the remaining ones as well.

Furthermore, shared hosting doesn’t offer a great deal of customizability, as you don’t get root access, cannot choose an operating system and there can be various other restrictions set by the provider.

Summing up, shared hosting can be a good one if your project is really small and not very demanding in all terms. If you need guaranteed stable performance and want to enrich your website with more sophisticated technical features, then it could be better to check out further options.

Virtual Private Hosting

A Virtual Private Server of VPS hosting is another hosting type that is based upon sharing the resources of a single server across several tenants. However, the sharing itself occurs in a more sophisticated way resulting in VPS hosting being a much better option from various perspectives. The reason for this efficiency is concealed in the technology that gave birth to this hosting type – virtualization technology. This technology allows for creating separate virtual instances on the basis of a single physical server. The instances are fully independent of each other and possess everything a separate physical machine is supposed to have – dedicated resources (RAM, CPU cores, storage space), root access, independent operation system, IP address, etc. In addition to that, your VPS server can be always rescaled to adapt to your current resource requirements.

A VPS server combines an affordable price with performance, stability, security, and scalability being a versatile solution for the owners of small to medium websites.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is another type of hosting that is based on virtualization technology. It offers almost the same quality of service and features as a VPS but is built in a way that allows a much more flexible and configurable allocation of resources. You can choose an exact number for each variable and pay the according sum. The billing cycles are also much more flexible with the possibility to pay not only on a monthly but also on a daily and hourly basis. However, the prices for cloud solutions are also generally higher than those for regular VPS. Generally speaking, cloud hosting is rather suitable for projects that need the maximum level of flexibility, developing at a fast and unpredictable pace or being short-term. If you are going to host a single site that is not going to grow too fast, a VPS will be a more reasonable option.

Conclusion

Choosing a hosting type is one of the primary steps in starting a website. Each site owner has different project requirements and may need different solutions. However, statistically, if you own a small business and are going to launch a corresponding website, then VPS hosting may be the most suitable solution.