What is Web Hosting? – Web Hosting Service Explained

Shared hosting service providers give you shared access to their web server. You get access to your directory or folder for website files, but you share server resources, including disk space, CPU power, and RAM. Shared hosting providers can have hundreds of websites or web applications using the same server. However, other websites will not see your internal data because no user gets access to the main or root directory.

Shared hosting is suitable for these kinds of cases: 

• New businesses or small businesses
• Personal websites and blogs
• Sole traders and owner-operator webpages

A shared hosting plan provides several web hosting benefits:

• Low monthly fees.
• Built-in features such as site builder and database software.
• Ease of setup and start.
• Ability to host multiple websites on a single account.

The following are some of the limitations of shared web hosting services:

• If another website on your server experiences a traffic spike, it will affect your website’s performance.
• You have less control of the server configuration, which limits your website features as well. For example, you cannot install third-party software, such as an accounts system, to integrate with your website.
• Costs may increase substantially as users and traffic growth increases.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting providers use a virtual private server to give you more exclusive access to server resources. VPS hosting technology partitions the physical server to create small virtual servers that you can lease. With virtual private servers, you have exclusive access to both space and computing resources, such as memory and processing power, on the physical server. You can install an operating system on your virtual server and have greater control of your server environment.

VPS hosting is suitable for these cases:

• Medium-sized businesses with increasing traffic.
• Complex websites that require installation of other business software on the server.

VPS hosting provides several benefits:

• Complete control over your virtual server configuration.
• Ease of scaling and customization.
• Greater control of website performance.

VPS hosting typically requires you to have some in-house technical expertise and server configuration knowledge. You can choose a managed hosting service that takes care of ongoing server maintenance to overcome this limitation.

Dedicated hosting providers give you access to the complete physical server. You have exclusive access to a dedicated server for only your website. You can optimize and control the environment as it suits your requirements. You can partition this server yourself to host multiple domains on the same physical server.

A dedicated hosting plan is suitable for these cases:

• Large enterprises and businesses.
• Business owners with multiple domains.
• Complex web applications that require large amounts of processing power.

Dedicated servers for web hosting provide several benefits:

• Greater reliability and security
• Greater server optimization capabilities
• Full customization of server configuration

A dedicated server is expensive to lease and maintain. You must also have in-house technical capabilities. Therefore, organizations that have scaled up sufficiently usually find that dedicated hosting is a better fit.

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Cloud hosting providers use resource sharing and scale to drive down web hosting costs and improve website performance. You get shared access to a cluster of servers, and the cloud hosting provider automatically replicates your website files across several servers. If one of the cloud servers is busy, the hosting provider automatically routes your traffic to another server. This greatly improves website performance without adding to your ongoing costs. 

You can choose from shared hosting, VPS hosting, or dedicated cloud hosting plans. What differentiates them is the underlying physical server management. 

Because you have several options in cloud hosting, it is suitable for all types of businesses, including the following:

• Small and medium businesses.
• Ecommerce and complex web applications.
• Government and nongovernmental organizations.
• Large enterprises with several domains.

Cloud hosting provides several benefits as a web hosting option:

• Greater availability and reliability for your website users.
• Automatically scales up or down as your requirements change.
• Increased security that meets the highest compliance standards.
• Automatic data backup and redundancy.
• High flexibility—you pay for only what you use.