If you are thinking of setting up a website, one of the questions that will definitely be on your mind is what type of hosting package to use. And of course, this used to be a challenging part of getting started with a website. Trying to figure out which hosting plan is best for your business can be sometimes overwhelming.
Every website is stored on a server and that is where all the content of the site is stored. The server also makes the content of your site available to your users. So we can simply say that web hosting is the act of storing a website’s content on a server. The server is run and maintained by a third-party company – your hosting provider.
However, a hosting provider usually offers more than just one hosting package from which you can choose. Just as the price of these packages is different, so also are their features. So you need to select the right web hosting services for your website. Remember, your server impacts your site’s availability, security, and performance. That means choosing the wrong plan can be really devastating in the long run.
In this post, we have highlighted the different types of hosting plans available to you, and what the features of each of them are. That will help you determine the right one for your website. But before we go into that, let’s answer some of the common questions usually asked by new website owners.
How Much Space Do I Need To Buy For My Website?
The amount of space you will need for your website will basically depend on the type of utility you will be giving on the site. If you are thinking of setting up an online store, you will need a higher capacity of the contracted disk than when setting up a simple site or landing page.
That is because with an online store, you will be having the products of the store on such a site and that will include their respective photos, videos, and information. But with a landing page, you will probably only have the contact information of your company, including about three or four images and some texts. For that kind of site, you won’t be needing much space.
However, when thinking of buying space for your site, it is recommended you get a space higher than what your page needs. The reason for this is that you never can tell, your website may increase its content in the near future.
What is bandwidth and how much of it do I need for my website?
The bandwidth is the space that will occupy all the data transfer of your website, depending on the volume of content you have on it. If you have many images and videos to be consumed by your users that entails a data transfer to your website, you will need more bandwidth than otherwise.
That means if you have a contract with your hosting company for a monthly bandwidth of 5GB, your site will no longer be available the moment the content sent to your users’ devices from your site reaches that limit. You will immediately get a message that you have exceeded your bandwidth and your site will no longer be available to your users.
What Type of Hosting Plan is Best for My Website?
Now, let’s answer this common question in the simplest way possible. We will be highlighting each type of hosting plan available and that will help you determine which is best for you.
Types of Hosting
#1: Shared Hosting
Just like the name implies, a shared hosting plan allows your website to share a server with other users. This is usually the most common type of hosting plan and it is also the least expensive. But it only provides limited features and storage space.
But using shared hosting could have its own disadvantages, and that includes high chance of having your site attacked by malware from the other sites sharing the same server with you. Your site could also crash if there is a traffic spike from other sites, causing the server to be overload. However, if you are just starting out with website development or you are planning on owning a small website, this might be the best option for you.
#2: Dedicated Hosting
This type of hosting plan is usually for high-traffic professional sites. It is the exact opposite of what shared hosting is because you won’t have to be sharing a server with anyone. Instead, you will be having an entire server hosting only for your website. That offers your site more security, performance, and disk space.
However, this hosting plan doesn’t come cheap. Dedicated hosting plans can be very expensive. And also, since it requires you to manage your server yourself, the cost of maintenance may make the overall cost of the plan more expensive. If you are running a small website that is not going to use the resources of a dedicated server to the fullest, you might consider going for other plans.
#3: Virtual Private Server (VPS)
If you think you don’t need a whole server to yourself and yet bothered about the drawbacks of shared hosting, going for VPS hosting will just be the best option for you. It is the middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Here, even though you will still be sharing your server with other websites, each site will have a dedicated and virtually partitioned amount of space.
That way, most of the drawbacks of shared hosting will already be taken care of while it still comes more affordable than a dedicated hosting plan.
#4: Reseller Hosting
It is the one that companies that are dedicated to web development buy to offer a personalized hosting service for their clients. To understand it in a simple way, it is as if you dedicate yourself to renting real estate and decide to rent a complete building and then offer the end user apartments or rooms according to demand.
#5: Cloud Hosting
This may not be a popular type of hosting, it is a specialized hosting plan you may also consider for your site. Cloud hosting involves storing your website on several servers, which all work together as just a single server.
That means even if you are planning to scale your website in the near future, you won’t be having any problems. And with this type of hosting plan, you will only be paying for the amount of space you use instead of paying forehand for a space you may later not use.
However, cloud hosting can be expensive and can sometimes be less secure than traditional hosting. But if you have a provider that is really reputable and a website that is likely to grow tremendously soon enough, you might consider this type of hosting.
