In case you are new to website hosting, you’ll first need to understand what are the types of hosting services available online.
In general, you’ll see ‘shared web hosting’, ‘reseller web hosting’, ‘dedicated web hosting’, as well as ‘virtual private servers’ (VPS) in most hosting providers’ offers.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common hosting ever used by individual webmasters and bloggers. A website on a shared hosting is hosted on a server that’s shared along with many other websites. Users pay a small amount of rental fees (hosting fees) to the server owners (shared hosting providers) and get to use the hardware owned by the providers. Such type of web hosting is always the cheapest and most practical for light weight websites.
Hostmonster, for example, is a shared hosting provider.
Dedicated Web Hosting
A dedicated hosting refers to the kind of server that’s used by one single website. You can either buy your own hardware (servers, network switch, etc) or rent an entire server from a web hosting company for dedicated web hosting. All computing powers and resources on a dedicated server are used by one website, this enables the website to work faster and more stable. It’s also worth noting that dedicated hosting is more secure when compare to shared hosting.
Hostmonster do not offers any dedicated hosting plan at the moment. In case you are looking for one, I suggest you to go with Hostgator as they are cheap, reliable, and have been operating for quite a while in dedicated hosting business. In brief, here are the pricing details for Hostgator dedicated hosting.
| Linux Servers |
Basic |
Standard |
Elite |
Pro |
| Processor |
P4 2.4GHz |
Dual-Core 3040 Xeon |
Dual-Core 3040 Xeon |
Quad-Core 3210 Xeon |
| Setup Fee |
Free |
Free |
Free |
Free |
| Monthly Price |
$174.00 |
$219.00 |
$279.00 |
$374.00 |
| DDR Memory |
1024MB |
1024MB |
4096MB |
4096MB |
| Hard Drive (SATA) |
80GB |
250GB |
2 x 250GB |
2 x 500GB |
| Bandwidth |
1,500GB |
1,500GB |
2,500GB |
2,500GB |
| Domains |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
| MySQL Databases |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
| IP Addresses |
5 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Private SSL |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Fantastico |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| IP Deny Manager |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Soho Launch |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Managed Server? |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
To learn more, visit Hostgator online.
Reseller Web Hosting
Reseller hosting refers to web hosting companies that allow you to resell their hosting capacity. Generally, reseller hosting allows you create your own brand name and run your own hosting business by reselling what’s the company had been offering. A reseller hosting customers get, for example, 1,000GB storage and 1,000,000GB bandwidth for a certain price. These hosting capacity is then divided into smaller part and offered to the other end users – say 100GB disk storage with 10,000GB bandwidth.
Reseller hosting service is the perfect hosting plan for those who are looking forward to start their very own hosting company. It allows you to start small without the cost of computer hardware.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
Virtual Private Server works like a virtual dedicated servers, where users get their own dedicated machine that’s sharing the same physical server with other websites. A VPS is the type of hosting that stands in between of dedicated and shared hosting. Websites running on VPS gets to run on its own operating system and is much stable than a shared hosting. Although it’s sharing the same resources with other VPS account, the private server can be boot and reboot independently.