Types of Hosting — Guide to Picking the Best for Your Website | kodu.cloud
What are the differences and why is it really important to understand it?
Are you just creating your first Internet project or are there some reasons to transfer an existing one to a new server? Then you must be considering which type of hosting would work well for you.
It's quite easy to make a choice if you're familiar with the main categories. There are countless offers on the market, differing significantly in price and support only. Yet, the type, quality and even cost are crucial for the successful development of your project. So, let see basic types of hosting closely:
Shared Hosting
If you're only thinking about purchasing space to host your website, you're likely thinking of virtual hosting. It's a service for placement websites on servers where each site has allocated space. Websites share resources such as disk space, RAM, and IP addresses.
In this case, if a neighbor on the same IP turns out to be "bad," your site also risks being unavailable or penalized in search engine rankings. Additionally, the technical limitations of shared hosting impose several restrictions:
- The provider may limit the number of hosted sites and databases
- Unable to use emailing
- Connecting additional modules (alternative email clients or antivirus) is impossible
- To prevent overloading the shared server, there's often a limit on process duration: a long task (e.g., data import) will be forcibly stopped. This can cause many problems when working with large projects.
- SSH access is often absent or severely restricted, making working with sites on frameworks and advanced administration difficult.
- Website owners don't have enough rights to install many software or system updates. So, most of the settings are limited; it's a basic/entry-level type of hosting that lacks advanced features or customization options.
Experienced website owners tend to avoid shared hosting because the small economy compared to VPS servers doesn't pay off, and it has massive risks for any project.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Rental
It’s like belonging to your dedicated server, but virtual and without the hefty price tag. A virtual machine mimics the real server, so you have complete control over such a server: root access, any software installation, or deep customization and configuration. A VPS has its own IP and is securely isolated from other virtual machines located on the same server.
VPS hosting unlocks a world of possibilities, not just for websites. VPNs, proxies, databases, NoSQL solutions, Docker, and specialized software can all be implemented. On a separate server, even if it's virtual, the possibilities for configuring and deploying custom projects are significantly broader compared to other hosting options.
The key advantage of VPS storage is that you're essentially the owner of your virtual server, with independent command over its service quality. Server administration becomes effortless with user-friendly and often free control panels like FASTPANEL.
This is a go-to solution for launching websites and for projects with moderate traffic.
Physical/dedicated Server: Purchase OR Rent
If you have a large project that requires significant resources and cannot tolerate being hosted alongside others, then buying your own server might be the best option. However, the cost will be substantial, and it will be accompanied by ongoing expenses for colocation (housing your equipment in a rented rack in a data center) or maintaining your own infrastructure: cooling, power stability and backup, repairs, internet connection, etc. Purchasing makes sense if the cost of renting high-quality equipment for an extended period exceeds the price of acquisition and if you are ready to keep your own system administrators who manage your self-hosted servers.
A healthy alternative to purchasing is renting it. A dedicated server of your own is a separate physical machine located in a data center, with which you interact remotely. Since you're renting rather than buying, the responsibility for maintaining the equipment falls on the service provider.
A dedicated server is the go-to choice for projects with large amounts of content and traffic, such as:
- Highly trafficked websites: large e-commerce stores or news websites
- Internet services: gaming platforms, streaming video, large file storage, online cinemas, etc
Cloud Hosting
By choosing cloud type of hosting, you get a virtual machine located on a cluster of servers, enabling dynamic resource allocation among clients based on their needs. The cloud eliminates potential downtimes associated with technical maintenance or failures of individual servers.
The payment system is a significant difference vs others. You pay not for the configuration but for the resources consumed: for CPU usage per hour, for network traffic in GB, etc. The more resources your project consumes, the proportionally more you pay for cloud hosting. You don't know how much you have to pay until the end of a month. On average is costs more than other types of hosting.
This type is perfect for high demand complex international resources. You can control your servers via API. Disadvantage is that cloud hosting platfroms are very complicated and even many programmers prefer not to spend so much time to deal with them.
In general, cloud hosting is build for strong technical teams who need maximum control, advanced features and are ready to spend more on hosting.
At kodu.cloud we offer several options of hosting
If you lack not only the skills but also the desire to administer your virtual server independently, choose a suitable fully managed plan where all maintenance tasks will be handled by a remote team of technical experts.
-View fully managed VPS plans on kodu.cloud
Renting a VPS is the most flexible service on the market: suitable for both blog owners and owners of online stores or corporate portals.
The cost of server hosting should not consume too large a portion of the funds allocated for project development. Fortunately, the variety of offers and configurations allows you to find the optimal hosting solution for any need. Contact kodu.cloud team to receive detailed recommendations and assistance in choosing the plan and calibrating resources according to your needs.