Different Types of Web Hosting Plans
Acquiring a Web hosting account is getting a company to host your website in their Web servers and manage or do maintenance work on the hardware and software resources needed to keep your website live and running 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. A Web host account user places the files of his or her website in one of the Web servers provided by the Web host.
Avoiding free Web hosting accounts is advised by many professional Web developers and experienced website owners, because the security and stability of the files and functions of your website may not be as good as the stability and security guaranteed by Web hosting companies offering paid Web hosting account plans. Customers may pay a low price of a dollar to $200 a month, depending on the extent of the services and the features that they may require the Web host to include in their account plans. Sometimes, the availability of too many or too little service features may confuse the customer and find it really challenging to choose a Web host account, let alone a Web hosting company.
One of the things a client must consider in getting a Web hosting account is their website’s bandwidth consumption. This is technically and conservatively estimating and computing the following:
- The size in kilobytes (kb) of a single web page in the website;
- In the busiest time of the week, up to what percentage does traffic occur; and
- What is the estimated number of page views could the website get in a normal week.
Once the customer gets to know the values of these things, it can help the provider determine the plan that would suit the customer’s website and at the same time, the customer would know whether the plan is worth his or her money.
Generally, Web hosts offer services that require customers to enter into a contract depending on the extent of services and features included in the customer’s plan. However, there are cases where a Web hosting company provides an open contract. This means the customer is free to seek the service of another web hosting company without paying for fees, such as an early termination fee. This is also another consideration that a customer should consider.
The most important consideration that a customer would have to make is what type of webhosting he or she likes to get. The first type and probably the most popular is free Web hosting, though as advised earlier, it is better to go with paid Web hosting account plans from reliable Web hosting companies. These free Web hosting accounts are usually bundled as a benefit for signing up with an ISP (Internet Service Provider). However, many free Web hosting accounts have limited service and some rely mainly on advertisements. Without these advertisements on the account holder’s website, service issues kick in as reported by a few free Web hosting account users. When this happens, the website may be compromised and could potentially lose its viewers and customers.
The second type is shared Web hosting. The provider typically places the website on a server with hundreds or thousands of other websites. This type usually includes extensive service features and may be suitable to websites with average bandwidth requirements.
Another type is called reseller web hosting. This is where the provider allows the customer to provide Web hosting services to others, depending on the customer’s affiliation with the Web hosting company. Some resellers duplicate their provider’s plan and can provide technical support for this type of Web hosting.
The fourth type is VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting. This is also known as the Virtual Dedicated Server. This is where one Web server is divided into several virtual servers. Virtualization is done to have the capability of moving the private server in between servers. Users in this type are given root access to their own virtual space. However, customers are responsible for the maintenance of their virtual servers.
The fifth type is dedicated hosting. This type allows the customer to get his or her own dedicated Web server and gain full control of it. The least expensive of this type is unmanaged or Self-Managed Web hosting, which gives the account holder the full responsibility of securing and maintaining the Web server.
The counterpart of dedicated unmanaged or self-managed hosting is managed hosting. This type does not give the user full admin access to the Web server, and this is done to ensure the provider’s standard of quality is always implemented. What is being avoided is for the customer to make unnecessary configurations in the server that might compromise its functionality. One similarity of the latter and former types is that the server is leased from the provider.
A powerful and expensive type of web hosting is collocated hosting. Here, the customer owns the server and the Web hosting company provides the physical space for the collocated server. The host in many cases may provide support for the maintenance of the customer’s collocated server hardware and software resources and its Internet connection. Also, usually included is the provision of electricity and Internet connection, as well as the storage space for the equipment. Users of a few collocated Web hosting accounts, most of the time, would need to hire an administrator to visit the data center to do upgrades or changes to the server hardware and software resources, if needed.
A new type of Web hosting is cloud hosting. This is considered to be a secure and reliable Web hosting account type. Cloud hosting is decentralized, which means the customer’s website data is not on a specific location and providers do not charge customers with a flat fee. The payment is based on the usage of the customer’s website, pretty much like a pay-as-you-go mobile phone subscription plan. Another advantage that customers can get with this type is when one computer experiences a hardware issue or a power outage, the other computers in the cloud would compensate for the others loss. The only disadvantage that this type may pose to users is that being decentralized makes it hard to monitor the security and privacy of data.
Another type of web hosting is called clustered hosting. This type uses multiple servers for one website, ensuring a much better utilization of resources. Most providers with shared hosting services use this type, as it helps them manage a large number of customers. There are plans with separate Web serving and database management service features in their offer.
The last type is home server hosting. This is where a single server is installed in a private home with at least a broadband connection. This can manage a single up to several websites. The only disadvantage is that some ISPs block the capability of such types of Web servers.