When you decide to have a hosting account, the first question is to decide which webhosting type you need to go with?
Technology has introduced various platforms for webhosting. They can be catagorised as follows :
Shared hosting
Reseller hosting
Semi-dedicated hosting
VPS hosting
Dedicated hosting
etc..
It is crucial to understand the differences among the types of hosting offered. As the Web hosting industry has matured, hosting offers have split into a few distinct categories, each with strengths and weaknesses.
* Shared hosting (sometimes called virtual hosting) means that you are sharing a server with other clients of that company. The host manages the server almost completely (though you maintain your site and your account). They can afford to charge you little since many clients are paying for use of the server.
However, companies other than yours use the resources of that server. That means heavy traffic to one of the other sites on the server can hammer the performance of your site. Also, you typically are unable to install special software programs on these types of machines because the host will need to keep a stable environment for all of the clients using the server.
Offering gigs of disk space with tons of gigs of bandwidth that too at a very cheap rate, is possible only with Shared hosting as resources are shared on a single server amongst hundreds and thousands of users.
* Reseller hosting enables you to resell the shared hosting to your end user clients. Here, the original hosting provider stays anonymous and to your end user clients you appear to be the primary hosting provider. This is good for those people who wish to start a hosting business. Later as your client number increases, the option to switch to VPS or Dedicated server hosting is preferred.
* Semi-dedicated hosting is similar to shared hosting, but here the number of users on a particular server is very less and limited as compared to the overfilled shared hosting servers. This is good for people who cannot afford dedicated hosting but still do not wish to face the cons of shared hosting.
* VPS hosting also known as Virtual Private Server, is an intermediate hosting between shared and dedicated hosting. VPS hosting servers are the small servers that are hosted on a main VPS server. VPS work on logically sharing of resources such as Memory (RAM), CPU, Disk Space, Bandwidth etc. VPS hosting is ideal for low resource consuming websites. The most attractive feature of VPS hosting is that you get root access to the server as if it was your dedicated server. You can install and run applications on your own (provided you do not run out of resources).
* Dedicated hosting can further be classifed into colocation, unmanaged and managed dedicated hosting.
* Co-located hosting means that you buy a server from a hardware vendor, like Dell or HP, and you supply this server to the host. The Web host plugs your server into its network and its redundant power systems. The host is responsible for ensuring its network is available, and you are responsible for support and maintenance of your server.
Good hosts offer management contracts to their co-location clients so that you can outsource much of the support to them and come to an arrangement similar to managed dedicated hosting. Most co-location hosts do not offer this service, however.
* Unmanaged dedicated hosting is similar to co-location except that you lease a server from a host and do not own it yourself. Some very limited support (typically Web-based only) is included, but the level of support varies widely among unmanaged dedicated hosts.
These days unmanaged dedicated hosting start from $69 per month. Support levels typically are provided only in general terms. Ask the host to go into specifics about what support it will provide — will it apply security patches to your server? — before signing up. This service is typically good for gaming servers (like Doom or Counterstrike servers) or hobbyist servers, but not for serious businesses that need responsive, expert-level service.
* Managed dedicated hosting means leasing a server from a host and having that company provide a robust level of support and maintenance on the server that is backed by quality guarantees. This maintenance typically includes services such as server uptime monitoring, a hardware warranty and security patch updates.
Ensure that your managed dedicated host is specific about its managed services so that it does not disguise an unmanaged dedicated offering as a managed dedicated server. This has been known to happen, which is why it is important to do your homework and ask the right questions.
We at http://www.rshosting.com offer UK and US based Reseller hosting, VPS Hosting, Semidedicated hosting, dedicated hosting (with fully managed servers).
