Which Web Hosting Plan Suits You Best?
Which of these 3 web hosting plans best fits your needs now? Let's take a closer look on each of them and then we shall decide together on the best plan for you.
Shared Hosting
Multiple websites are hosted on a single server, so each website account ends up "sharing" server space, bandwidth and other resources with other accounts.
In other words, you do not have a private server space for yourself. Thus, you have very little control over your own applications. It's like sharing a room with your room mates, you can't take charge of all resources inside the room. They had to be shared.
And because of that, shared hosting costs cheaper and suits beginners best.
Tip: Shared hosting in itself carries 3 or 4 hosting packages. The first package usually contains the least features and allows you to host only one website. If you plan to focus on just one business in the next one or two years, then go for this. But if you plan to run 2 or more websites in the near future, then pick the second cheapest that allows you to host multiple websites. Of course, if you have more money to spare, you can go ahead with the package with more features, provided you do really need them.
The whole idea is, keep your web hosting cost-effective.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
With this technology, you have more control over your own applications because you're allocated a private server space for your own applications.
No doubt you're getting a guaranteed share of the server CPU, disk input / output and network, but you're still sharing the resources with other VPS account holders on a server. Just that now you get to own more privacy and more control over certain resources than you're in shared hosting.
It's like having your own room in a house. You can command everything inside the room, but you can't monopolize the entire resources in the house because you're sharing the house with other occupants.
Simply put, you're getting the features of dedicated hosting in a shared environment but taking a step backwards in performance compared to dedicated hosting. That's why the price is lower than that of dedicated hosting but a little higher than that of shared hosting.
VPS plan is more for those moving up from shared hosting but not quite ready for dedicated hosting yet.
Dedicated Server Hosting
You're the owner of the entire server in this plan — you own its pre-installed core hardware and software resources, physically to yourself. But the server will be remotely manned and managed by the web hosting company. You don't have to worry a least bit about server upgrades, virus / spyware protection and protection against hackers etc, everything will be taken care of by them so you can focus on the business aspect of your website.
It's like you own a house. You're the only one living in there. You have 100% complete control over ALL the resources. But you may not want to manage such a big house yourself, so you hire a housekeeper to run your house, under your command, as in you pay the web hosting provider to operate and run the server for you.
Technically, the main advantage of dedicated hosting over VPS and shared hosting is the power for you to install scripts that require root access or account level access, unlike VPS and shared hosting that only allow you to install scripts at account level access only. In other words, you have complete admin rights over dedicated server hosting.
Obviously, this plan costs higher due to its capability and capacity to provide your websites with a higher level of performance, security, speed, and uptime etc. Big social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube (video-based) and others are using dedicated servers.
Which Plan Rings the Most True to You Now?
If you're just getting started in this Internet thing, and you're not so technical savvy or you simply hate to deal with technical stuff, then I suggest that you take up the cheaper shared hosting plan first.
This is also especially beneficial to you if you're on a tight budget.
Most webmasters start off with shared hosting, then progressively move up to Virtual Private Server (VPS) and finally to dedicated server hosting as their experience, knowledge, skills and income grow.
Of course if you have the spending power plus you're technical savvy and you're planning to open a social networking site, and wanted to exercise more control over your website hosting such as running and installing your own applications and scripts, managing your own configuration files, network, DNS and much more... then bypassing the shared hosting plan and subscribing straight to dedicated hosting on a monthly basis may be your best bet.
You can buy and host a dedicated server at your place, but you'll spend more time dwelling on the technical issues than in the marketing / business aspect. Hence, pay monthly and get someone to look after your dedicated server is the best option for most small business website owners.
Do check with the customer support for more details on how to go about doing dedicated hosting. This will ensure as minimal screw-up on your dedicated hosting as possible.