Your web hosting needs will increase and become more complex as your internet business grows. The chief responsibilities of a web hosting company are to provide server space, web services and maintenance of servers which host the websites owned.
To get the best hosting services for your internet business, it is advisable to understand in detail different web hosting plans.
1. Shared Hosting
Shared hosting means that your website is hosted on a super server shared by other websites. One big advantage of this setup is the shared cost which can get quite low. The disadvantage can be that you're at the mercy of the other sites on your server, where a really popular site can affect the performance of your own site.
2. Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting packages mean basically a shared hosting account with extra tools, which can help you resell hosting space. Coming with greater technical control and perks like- free website templates, white label technical support, private name servers, this can make your company leave a bigger impression.
3. Grid / Cloud Hosting
A fairly new hosting technology, Grid hosting lets hundreds of individual servers work together so that it looks like one giant server. The hosting company can just add more commodity hardware to make an ever larger grid or cloud as the need grows.
4. Virtual Private Server (VPS)
A VPS is a stepping stone between shared hosting and getting your own dedicated machine. They share one physical server but acts like multiple, separate servers. Each VPS instance shares are allocated a dedicated slice of the computing resources and avoids the problem of having your hosting neighbors bring down your website, thus keeping the price low.
5. Dedicated Server
A dedicated server, as the name implies, means you are renting one physical server from a hosting company. You have full control if you want it.
6. Colocation
Colocation means that you rent rack space from a data center. When you collocate, you bring in your own server hardware and they provide power, cooling, physical security, and an internet uplink. Here you're responsible for your own server software, data storage, backup procedures, etc.
Unless you have the technical know-how in-house, colocation is probably not worth the investment in time, expertise, and money for most small businesses. For if the hardware fails, you're responsible for replacing it and getting the server back up and running.
7. Self Service
This is the ultimate hosting plan, for here you buy the servers, install and configure the software. You will have to take care of data center space, cooling, power (with backup), bandwidth, server hardware, systems administrator, data integrity and backup. Just make sure there is sufficient cooling and power in your machine room.
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