Website hosting can be categorized into several groups based on the criteria used. You can have free and paid hosting and the paid package can be further subdivided into dedicated and shared hosting. Hosting can also be categorized according to the operating systems used i.e. Windows, Linux, etc and they can be categorized according to their package features.
This hosting puts your website on a server that you have to share with others. All websites on a shared server will use the same operating system, server space and other server resources like CPU processing capability. You can further break down this hosting into two more groups:
Free hosting – this is where you get hosting and bandwidth for free. This is only suitable for a small website that will not use a lot of the server’s resources. The support services for such hosting are also not the best.
Paid hosting – as the term suggests, you have to pay for this kid of hosting. The hosting packages are priced according to the server resources that you will be requiring so you can get low cost or premium shared hosting. This kind of hosting is good for small to medium sized web ventures that need more than can be offered by the free hosting but still do not need a dedicated server. This enables you to get a server that is administered for you for a low monthly fee.
The advantages of this hosting package are:
They can be low cost – You can get hosting from as little as 3 dollars per month.
Easy to manage – The tools that come with this package allows you to manage your website with no special skills at all.
More features – You get the opportunity of registering multiple domains, having multiple email addresses, a database, etc.
The servers in this case will be administered properly and will be backed up regularly.
The disadvantages of this hosting package are:
The security is compromised – The fact that multiple websites are hosted on the same server compromises security. At times you will find mischievous webmasters hacking into your website.
Limited resources – Everybody is using the same server. This means that other than sharing hard disk space, you will be sharing bandwidth, and CPU processing capability. This has occasionally led to server crashing and webmasters losing data.
Limited expandability – you can only use software provided by the hosting company. You will not be able to use your own software and this can limit the performance of your website.
When it comes to choosing the hosting company, you should pay special attention to their customer support services and backup policies. These are very important when your website becomes affected due to the sharing of server resources. You may also need help on another technical issue. If the server crashes, you want to know that your data is backed regularly and they can restore your website in a flash.
