For business, what’s in shortage is time; and for startups, it’s funds, too. As a startup, you are most likely to be gleaning pennies to hit the turf with your business. Obviously, you’d want to explore the range of hosting before you decide what’s best for you. In order to carve a niche out of your hosting, it is not necessary to choose the most expensive server, but the one that can be moulded to fit your business.
Here, we have listed the hosting types with some providers that you can choose from:
Table of Contents
1. Shared servers
If you are new to servers and your needs are limited, shared hosting could be your thing. These servers are almost entirely provider-managed, so you can focus more on growing your business rather than hunting bugs and fixing broken files.
Performance could be an issue with Shared hosting, though. Since the same server resource is being shared by hundreds of websites (or more), you can expect a resource drain if any website on the same machine, as yours, experiences a traffic surge.
Shared hosting is cheap, nonetheless; in fact, cheaper than any other hosting.
There are some great shared hosting plans from companies like GoDaddy, HostGator, go4hosting, etc. with plans starting for as small as $3 per month.
2. Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
A VPS is Holy Grail for admins who want superior power and control at affordable rates.
Once you tried your hands on a shared server and your business hits popularity, you would want a more robust server offering better performance. A VPS can be provider-managed or unmanaged. While the latter will burden you with too many tasks, it can yield better results when managed rightly.
These serves are more secured, and so a common choice for companies that store user sensitive info such as credit data, mobile numbers, etc. A VPS can be rented from a third-party, and the pricing varies with the specifications you choose.
The prominent competitors include Hostwinds, Bluehost, FatCow, go4hosting, etc. with at annual pricing that comes to around $3.5 per month, for 1vCore(s) from 2 GHz, 2GB RAM.
VPS bridges the gap between a shared and dedicated server – which will be our subject for discussion next.
3. Dedicated servers
A dedicated server is the pinnacle of specifications that a server can have. They are no cheap, but offer the utmost level of control, security, and performance. These servers are only apt for admins that are technically proficient and have worked with servers before.
You might want to choose this option once your brand is the talk of the town. No other server can cater to your needs as well as a dedicated server. But, managing such server is no child’s play and requires a devoted IT team to manage it inside-out.
You can expect to pay anywhere around $85 (plus and minus $10) for a dedicated server with the most basic configuration.
Some of the most widely known providers include BigRock, GoDaddy, hostgator, and go4hosting.
4. Cloud servers
Now, these are the state-of-the-art server storage systems that have only recently gained popularity. A cloud server is a virtualized storage accessible via the internet. What makes it even more deadly a tool is that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, anytime – an outcome of achieving virtualization.
Cloud hosting is cheap (cheaper than dedicated servers and VPS – in most cases) and is intensely scalable. Besides, whatever data goes into clouds is stored at multiple locations, making it more reliable and thus ensuring higher uptime availability. Such servers are almost entirely rented over the provider’s premise, so, hardware management wouldn’t concern you too much.
Setting up an infrastructure for servers could be time-consuming and expensive. Cloud extricates organizations from bearing huge capital expenditure and replaces it with operating expenditure instead.
The prominent Cloud providers include DropBox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc.
5. Reseller hosting
In such hosting, a business buys bulk server space in wholesale, and sells it to other companies as its own, for profit. Reseller hosting comes at a lesser price and offers bandwidth and storage that aren’t available with the primary host. There is a downside to reseller hosting, though. The services are only as good as the reseller.
Some known reseller hosting companies are DomainRacer, BigRock, go4hosting, HostGator, etc.
Different hosting gratifies different business needs.
We have tried to make a comprehensive list of all hosting options out there. Choose wisely. The best hosting isn’t necessarily the most expensive one.
If you want us to write about something, or if you have something to share regarding hosting or anything else, write in the comment box below.
There are more such informative articles in our bucket, covering A-Z of hosting, servers, clouds and many more. Pay them a visit here.
Happy Hosting
About the author
Nishant, content writer at Go4hosting, writes well-researched technical blogs on Cloud Computing, Server Hosting and Cyber Security. Nishant has written short stories, poems, and snippets for a number of blogs (including his own). When he is not writing he is either sleeping or playing tennis.
