A person builds a house or takes it in rent to  stay in and to live his livelihood. Same things are applicable for website. You must rent or create a web host to keep your website there. In one line this is your website house. A web host is basically a high configured computer which runs 24X7 with high speed internet connection and a static IP. Sometime we call it server. Visitor visits your website via web browser, requests some files/pages to web host/server and your web host gives some processed files to the visitor. So, web host contains website files, images, documents, coding etc for your visitor.

What is web Hosting and how to choose?

Now, let’s come to web hosting term. Web hosting is a service, provides by a company or individual that serves your website to anyone that visits it. A good web hosting must have below mentioned features:

• Website running percentage (99% and above)
• Speed
• Unlimited hosting (Bandwidth + Storage)
• 24X7 Support (Phone + Chat)
• Malware and spam protection
• Virus Scan
• Latest software version support

Here you can find how to choose best web hosting company for your dream website.(Anchor tag) Web Hosting types and it’s advantage and disadvantage Different web hosting companies sell multiple types of web hosting for our websites (Portfolio site, eCommerce site etc). Below I discuss each of them and how to choose from it.

01) Shared Web Hosting

The name “Shared hosting” means it shares same server with multiple websites or in other words – your website is hosted on a server shared by other websites. Almost all popular web hosting company provide this type of hosting. <tdstyle=”width:50%; padding:10px; border-bottom:#333 1px solid;”>Brandwidth: In Shared Hosting you can’t handle huge traffic due to limitation of bandwidth and you may lost your client.

Advantage	Disadvantage
Cost Cutting: You can get a Shared Hosting in very low price.	Performance: In Shared Hosting you will feel speed and performance issues due to a really popular site( which is hosted on same shared server) which may adversely affect the performance of your own site.
Availability: You will find hundreds of provider for Shared Hosting.

  But you can start your online business with a shared hosting plan to minimize costs when website is not likely getting a huge of traffic initially. Shared hosting is good for a portfolio type site, small bogs, small stores, small businesses or a newer site that doesn’t get a lot of traffic.

02) Reseller Web Hosting

A web hosting needs multiple data center with latest servers, cooling systems, unlimited power supply, unlimited internet connection, power backup, technical expertise etc. But if you want to setup your own Web Hosting service with minimum cost, not bothering above points then you can go for Reseller hosting. The idea is basically rent a whole apartment with number of flats and then give others to rent single flat or double flat and make money from this. So it is basically a shared hosting account with extra tools to help you resell hosting space. When you purchase this hosting, hosting company gives you name server which is applicable for all hosting which you create from your reseller hosting. Reseller packages come with WHM(Web Host Manager) panel from where you can manage individual share hosting, clients, billing invoice etc.  

Advantage	Disadvantage
You can earn extra money if you buy Reseller Hosting and sell to individual client’s as a shared hosting	Limitation: Please read all documents before purchasing reseller hosting because hosting company put some limitation in bandwidth, web space etc. Which give some issues in future.
Maintenance: No need to worry for any maintenance, your reseller hosting provider will do it for you	Web Traffic: If one of your shared server get huge traffic, it can effect on other server running.

  Web developers, agencies who manage clients can buy Reseller packages. Even you can also start selling hosting services if you are good at online marketing and is little bit technically expert.

03)  Cloud-Based Web Hosting

Cloud Based Web Hosting refers to a fairly new hosting technology that works together with the resources of several individual servers so it looks like one giant server.  Basically, this means that your website uses the virtual resources of several servers to accommodate all the aspects of hosting your site. The load is balanced, security is taken care of and hardware resources are available virtually so they can be used when needed. The cluster of servers is the cloud.    

Advantage	Disadvantage
Web Traffic: If your website has large amount of website traffic cloud hosting can accommodate the surge of traffic – rather than shutting your website down.	Technical Expertise: For setup cloud hosting and maintain it regular you need to be a very good technical expertise person. It increase your hosting cost
Customizable Resource:  Cloud hosting gives you more server resources like unlimited storage, more powerful CPU, better RAM and you can also increase storage, RAM etc for better speed and optimization.	Serious Security Risk: Nothing in the internet is complete secure and since you put all your sensitive information storing  on a cloud you could be putting your company at a serious security risk.

04)  Virtual Private Server (VPS)

  A virtual private server(VPS) is a virtualized server which is actually installed on a computer, serving multiple websites. A single computer (sharing same physical resources like CPU, RAM, Hard Disk etc) can have several VPSs, each one with its own operating system (OS) that runs the hosting software for a particular user. VPS shares one physical server but acts like multiple, separate servers and it can also be rebooted independently. VPS and shared hosting both share a single server’s resources. But in shared hosting, you share everything with other users. In VPS you have defined memory and bandwidth allocations within your virtual environment. A VPS will give you far more bandwidth and disk space and ensure you are never compromised by someone else’s website.  

Advantage	Disadvantage
Flexibility: With a VPS, you can customize your hardware and software settings and run your own applications if you want.	Requires technical knowledge – You need to take  responsibility in installing softwares, software patches, maintaining the server, security issues etc. That’s why to manage and maintain a VPS server you need to have some technical knowledge.
Better security/Privacy: You are not sharing any resources with others, their mistakes, faulty scripts or any other won’t affect the up-time or accessibility of your Web site	Lack of performance: Some time VPS server can’t handle huge traffic due to limited resources and your website is down.
Root access: A VPS gives you root access therefrom you can configure your server settings and install your own operating system and other applications.

  If you want more control over your server, feeling constrained with your shared hosting plans and can not afford to purchase cloud or dedicated hosting, you can go for it. In the next blog I will tell more about other types of hosting and you will surely understand about your need.