Web hosting has become a household word nowadays and different people (especially different service providers) define it their own way. To get a better idea of web hosting, identifying the basic types of web hosting would be the first step. Let’s discuss each type of web hosting and how they differ from one another.

If I say that the most common type of web hosting is “Free web hosting”, I know you will agree with me. This is the oldest and the most popular type. It is free and mostly, advertisement supported. Although this kind of web hosting comes with a lot of limitations, it is still the best for maintaining a personal web space.

The next cheapest hosting type is “Shared web hosting”. If you buy couple of gigabytes of space and a considerable amount of bandwidth for your small business website, you would have probably been offered a shared web hosting. In shared web hosting, all the sites or domains share a pool of resources such as RAM and CPU. But when it comes to “Dedicated web hosting”, you will get a web server and full access to the hosting environment such as the operating system etc. although you will not own the server.

The alternative for dedicated web hosting is called “Virtual dedicated hosting”. In this case, one physical server will have many virtual servers installed where each client is given full access over their own virtual server. Therefore clients feel they own a separate server but actually they are sharing a server with many others.

One other common type is “Managed web hosting” where the user gets a dedicated physical server for hosting but does not get the full control over it such as root access to Linux OS. Instead the user is given the facility to access and control their content via FTP tools, custom written tools or a web interface such as CPanel. This is to guarantee the quality of service by not allowing the user to do configuration changes in the server which might lead to a potential problem.

“Colocation web hosting” is similar to dedicated web hosting, but in this case user owns the server. The hosting company provides the space for the physical server and takes care of the server. This is the most expensive way of web hosting and also the most powerful way. All the administration and maintenance work will be carried out by the user while the host provides internet access, electricity, physical security and etc.

I think we have covered the most common types of web hosting here and their differences. It is always up to the user to choose the type they want, based on the business requirements.

Tags: bandwidth, dedicated web hosting, free web hosting, ftp tools, personal web space, shared web hosting, web hosting, web hosting types