/ Sr. Web Developer
Hosting ◦ Website Development

Website owners often tend to overlook the importance of choosing the right hosting provider. Your website’s speed depends greatly on where you host it, so the two primary components that will affect your decision are cost and speed.

You have four main choices when it comes to hosting your website; we will review all of them in details. You can host your site:

  • With virtual hosting ( or shared hosting)
  • on a Virtual Private Server (VPS)
  • on a dedicated server
  • in the cloud

The four main choices

Virtual/Shared Hosting

Your website shares a server with other websites. There could be anywhere from just a few to thousands of websites on the same server. The server as a finite amount of resources (RAM, CPU, bandwidth and storage space) that is split between all the websites.
Shared hosting is enough for most websites that do not require a lot of resources and it is the cheapest solution. It also has one of the best support systems as many sites rely on one server. However, every site is not limited to its small share of CPU and RAM, but they all can use all of it. This means that if one site uses more than it should, it will slow down all the other sites.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

With VPS, several websites share a server via partitions: each within a closed private environment. Therefore no matter how much resources the other sites use, yours will be safe. VPS is slightly more expensive than shared hosting, but it is also slightly better. VPS also offers the website owners more control and flexibility over the server.

Dedicated Server Hosting

A dedicated server is just that, your very own server that is just for your website(s), and you have full control of it. You can use all the storage space, CPU or bandwidth available on the server for your one site. Obviously, this is a solution for sites that require a lot of resources. Dedicated servers often have the option to be managed or unmanaged. With managed servers, the hosting provider will, keeping everything up to date, protect if from threats and fix any system level problems that may arise. Unmanaged hosting puts you in charge of system upgrades, updates, and issues, but you have more freedom to configure the system to your liking.
The freedom and (almost) unlimited resources come at a price, dedicated servers are much more expensive than VPS or shared hosting. You can lower the cost by choosing to have it unmanaged but make sure someone at your company will be able to take care of the administrative tasks.

Cloud

You can also host your website in the cloud instead of on a server. The cloud means storing your data on the internet rather than on a machine in the back of somebody’s office. By hosting on the cloud, you can use as much or as little resource as you need, the internet is your limit. It’s also cheaper than hosting on a server because you often share maintenance cost with a larger group of people.

The cloud does have cons; your data can be all over the internet which is not a good idea if you handle secure information. It rarely goes down, but when it does you cannot do anything since it is all hosted online; and vice-versa if you do not have access to the internet you cannot use your files.

 

How do I choose?

Your hosting needs will depend on how many resources you need. If customers interact with your website a lot – such as if you have an e-commerce store or a login area – you will need more resources, and clients will be more demanding on the speed of your website.

To sum up, for more websites shared hosting is enough. The same sites can pay a little more for the added security that the VPS provides. If your site uses large web apps, then you might have to go for a dedicated server. Once you’ve made up your mind on the size, you can make up your mind on whether you want your site to be hosted on a machine, or in the cloud.

You should be able to ask your website developer for their input, and they should be able to recommend the best options for you site. Here at Matmon, we offer all four of those options in our datacenter, in the cloud and with third-party providers.