If you are in the market for web hosting, you need to make sure that you pick the right solution for your business. What works for your business might not be right for another business and vice versa. Your choice depends on many factors, usually related to the size of your website, your traffic and your budget.  Reliable monthly web hosting service like iiNet is a primary consideration and it should be assessed closely if they are able to provide the needs of your business.

So, lets’ take a look at 5 different types of hosting, so you can decide on the most suitable package for your business.

Shared hosting

This is the type of hosting most people are familiar with and is where your website is hosted on a server with a number of other websites. The advantage of shared hosting is that it is the cheapest, but the problem is that you share your resources with lots of other websites on the same server. So, if another website has lots of traffic, they can slow your site down considerably. This type of hosting is best for small or home based businesses.

Dedicated hosting

This is where your website is hosted on its own server and all of the resources are yours to enjoy.  Larger enterprises and companies with big ecommerce web sites, or sites that need lots of storage and bandwidth, usually opt for a dedicated server. You can host multiple domains on your server and load as many apps or software packages as you like. The problem is that you need the skills to manage the server and also that dedicated hosting has a hefty price tag, so is not the best option for small to medium sized businesses.

Cloud hosting

All the rage lately, cloud hosting gives start-ups a fast track to getting online and is becoming very popular with large websites as well. The reason cloud hosting is catching on is because you can use as few or as many resources as you need, ramping up during busy holiday times and slowing down in quieter times.

Cloud hosting is not only very flexible, but is also very cost effective as you only pay for what you use and in addition, you can access all of the apps and software you need, directly from the cloud. Cloud computing is suitable for any size business, from home based right up to large corporations.

VPS (Virtual Private Servers)

This is a great way to access more resources than available in shared hosting, without making the plunge into dedicated hosting. So with a VPS, you still share the servers with other websites but you have your own allocated amount of resources. This means that it doesn’t matter how many resources are used by other websites, because it won’t affect your slice of the resources. These are suitable for medium sized businesses who are not yet ready to move to dedicated hosting.

Managed hosting

This is dedicated hosting without the need to manage everything yourself. So you have your own server and resources, but your software and other needs are managed by the hosting company. These are suitable for medium sized businesses who don’t have the IT knowledge to manage the whole operation themselves, but need the space and resources provided by dedicated hosting.