All websites and blogs on the Internet start with one host. Hosting is one of the topics that can confuse even the most knowledgeable web developers. In this article, we will introduce the types of hosts and the differences between them so that the issue becomes clearer to you as much as possible.
Table of Contents
The difference between hosts
As we write this, we have come to the conclusion that in most cases, the terms hosting and web hosting packages are used interchangeably. Most hosts offer different packages for sale to users.
The easiest way to choose web hosting
The easiest way to get started is to first identify your hosting needs and choose and purchase the service you want from your web hosting provider.
By Technology
In general, there are three ways to differentiate between web hosting packages. One of these methods is to pay attention to the technology that they use for their hosting services. Thus we come to four categories: shared services, VPS, Dedicated and Cloud.
By Management level
The second method is to categorize hosts at their management level. As mentioned, a server like your home computer. In addition to the operating system, your computer also has software. Like any other computer, servers need to be upgraded and maintained. Many hosts have server management software (such as C-Panel, Plesk,…), but you can provide a service that does everything yourself. A server with management software requires less effort but less flexibility. A server without management software takes more effort to set up but is more flexible. There is a great variety among such services, with or without management software, and depending on your needs, you can provide one of them.
By Complementary services
The third method of classification is through complementary services. Some of these services include: backup, support level, security features, SSL security certificate, free bandwidth, platform-specific services (such as WordPress), website implementation, and more.
In this article, we will focus on the first classification method, server technology. Stay with us until the end of the article.
Shared systems – cheap and suitable for beginners
Shared hosting is very cheap but not good at all in terms of quality. In the following, we will explain this issue further.
In shared services, the hosting company shares a limited resource server between users of different websites. The meaning of many users can be up to 1000 users. A server may also host up to 3,000 websites.
The problem with shared services is that they share server resources. If one website consumes almost 75% of the server resources due to high traffic, for the other 2999 sites only 25% of the resources remain to be used.
It is quite clear that this issue causes the sites to load or eventually download slowly in the user’s browser. In other words, if your neighbors consume a lot of resources on the shared server, the speed of your site will also slow down. In these cases, you can ask the hosting company to put your site on a server that has fewer neighbors.
Of course, many companies do this automatically. They identify high-traffic sites and automatically place them on more secluded servers. They may even temporarily disable the busy site.
Shared hosting is very useful for websites under design and development, test web design and sites that do not need to be online 24 hours a day. You may have a site that is just for writing your diary and you do not have many users. So a few definite times in a month will not hurt you much.
Shared hosting is a great option for those who have financial problems due to their low price. These hosts are also very useful in developing countries where the financial issue of site maintenance is important to their owners. These types of hosts in these countries allow businesses to be online at a very low cost. So shared hosting helps a lot in equality between people for internet activity in different parts of the world.
VPS Hosting – More Powerful Than Shared Hosting
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. This type of hosting is probably the most popular type among users who want to upgrade their hosting. A VPS is still a shared environment, but the type of sharing is different.
The resources of a VPS server are usually divided into 10 to 20 parts, and they usually use hypervisor technology to properly distribute these resources.
A VPS server is shared according to the size of its users. For example, if a VPS has 10 users, 10 GB of RAM and 200 GB of hard disk, each user will have 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of hard drive. If a website exceeds its RAM limit, other sites will not be harmed and only that site will be disrupted. Hypervisor technology is responsible for managing virtual machines between which resources are shared. In very rare cases, the influx of users to multiple sites from one VPS may interfere with the overall management of resources.
Another advantage of VPS servers is that they have a lot of settings and this makes them more flexible. This feature is not available in shared services. Because by applying a change in one of the hosts, changes will be applied to other neighboring hosts.
VPS servers also have a certain scale for their resources. The exact amount of resources available per second is known, and if you encounter an increase in your business traffic in the future, you can easily increase your resources.
VPS hosting is certainly more expensive than shared hosting, but the cheapest is better than the most expensive shared hosting. The cost of VPS varies from company to company, and with a little research you can find a great variety of them.
A very powerful VPS service on the market is probably cheaper than the cheapest dedicated server provided by companies. Do not think that a dedicated server is better than a VPS because it is more expensive. The reason that dedicated servers are more expensive is that you are the only one using them. The power of a server to provide services to users depends on the resources available to it.
Dedicated hosting – suitable for sites with more than 100,000 visits per month
Dedicated hosting does not have any of the negative effects of neighboring hosting, as your website is hosted exclusively on one server. These types of hosts have many advantages but have their own problems.
Advantages
Because the entire server is yours, companies allow you to customize it completely. You can choose one of the operating system types or the amount of memory and the type of server processor. These options open your hands a lot for the specific activity you have.
With the flexibility of these dedicated hosts, you can install more diverse applications on the server and increase the speed and security of the website.
Disadvantages
Dedicated hosting problems start when you need to know more about computers and server technologies. However, companies usually provide their own hosts with management software to make it easier to work with.
In packages without management software, you have to start the operating system from scratch and configure all the necessary tools to set up the web server. This may not be a downside to these types of hosts, but you need to be familiar with them when purchasing these types of servers. To set up these types of hosts from scratch requires a lot of knowledge.
One of the problems you may encounter on dedicated servers is hardware issues. In VPS hosts, if the RAM is full, the system automatically but temporarily inserts another memory so that the website can overcome the problem of heavy load. But on dedicated servers, you probably need more time to fix this problem, especially if you are manually controlling and monitoring the server.
The only thing we recommend for a dedicated server is that either your needs are very specialized in the field of hardware or you need much more control than VPS servers.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is generally similar to VPS hosting. Some companies no longer sell their VPS services under this name and sell under other titles such as cloud services or cloud VPS services.
In cloud hosting, the resources of several servers are used and served together in a network. This will make the network more stable and secure. A traditional VPS has a certain limit, which is the maximum amount of hardware power. But in cloud systems this limitation can always be increasing.
Cloud systems are much more resistant to DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks do not pose a security problem, and their sole purpose is to disable a server by sending large packets of traffic to it. Currently the best way to deal with DDoS attacks is to block large requests from one source and distribute them over a larger network.
Many companies are now migrating from traditional VPS systems to cloud systems to reap the benefits.