The 8 Best Types of Web Hosting to Consider in 2023

Web hosting ensures that websites perform as they should regarding speed and availability. With various web hosting services, you can easily make your web pages accessible on the internet.

Since web hosting is crucial to every website or powering anything online, most subscribers are faced with the challenge of choosing the best from different types of web hosting services.

This article is a sure guide to making the right choice when deciding which web hosting options suit your needs.

Let's get started.

1. Shared Server Hosting

Shared server hosting is the best for small or every-level website hosting—this type of web hosting stores your website on the same server with multiple websites. You can describe shared hosting as the most basic type of web hosting.

Every website that uses shared hosting must share resources with others on one web server. It is a great advantage to various users because a website cannot exhaust the resources available on the server.

Shared hosting is cheap and cost-effective because the web host is not required to pay too much to host the website on the server. After all, the server’s resources are shared with multiple hosts.

Simultaneously each website host will have access to limited resources based on the web hosting plans.

Apart from cost-effecting shared web hosting, it may result in certain issues affecting every web host. When another website on the same web server experiences a traffic spike, your website will simultaneously experience performance issues.

If your site experiences performance issues due to a website traffic spike in another website, there is little or nothing you can do about this because the server you share has been affected.

Shared hosting will not give you the best when it comes to a high-quality web experience for both the host and the site’s visitors.

The best shared hosting services include Bluehost, Hostinger, DreamHost, InMotion, and A2 Hosting.

Pros

• Cost-effective
• Easy to set up
• No required technical know-how
• Perfect for beginners and small businesses

Cons

• Not scalable for all businesses
• Lower uptime rates and slower loading times
• There is nothing you can do about performance issues that may arise
• Shared server resources

Who Should Use Shared Server Hosting

Shared server hosting is best for simple website owners or beginners who lack deep technical knowledge. Since sharing a web server is cost-effective with relatively cheap web hosting plans, bloggers and small business owners are ideal for shared hosting.

Additionally, websites without larger on-site interactions or activities that do not require lots of resources will be fine with such servers.

Bluehost – Best Shared Hosting Provider

If shared hosting is ideal for your website, Bluehost is the perfect tool. This web hosting provider has an outstanding reputation in the industry, with over 2 million websites worldwide using Bluehost as their hosting provider.

Bluehost’s minimum hosting plan is as low as $2.95 per month, which is affordable, especially for beginners and small business owners.

This web hosting service offers plans accompanied by a free domain, marketing credits for Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, and a free SSL certificate.

Bluehost’s customer service is top-notch, with 24/7 support for users that require assistance or are experiencing issues they can not handle.

2. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

VPS hosting is more advanced than shared web hosting. If the shared plan of a particular web server is no longer sufficient for a website, it is common for website owners to upgrade to a virtual private server.

This type of web hosting is unique because every website is hosted in its personal space on the server sharing the same physical server with other users.

When using VPS web hosting, you will still have to share the server's resources with other websites, but the number of sites you share with is not so much compared to a shared server hosting.

Since the main server is split among websites into multiple virtual servers, each can customize these virtual servers.

Some benefits of using VPS hosting are that your website will have more resources to perform better, faster loading times, higher uptime rates, and a high traffic spike in another website will not affect your site’s performance.

With VPS hosting, you will experience some of the features of dedicated server hosting at a fraction of the price.

Pros

• You can make custom configurations for your server
• Increased fast loading speed and uptime rates
• Cost-effective when compared to a dedicated server
• You enjoy some dedicated server resources features
• Larger storage space than shared web hosting

Cons

• Sharing the main server with other websites
• Limited control
• More technical to set up than a shared server

Who Should Use Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

VPS hosting is ideal for website owners who want total control over their servers and those looking for a cheaper option than dedicated servers.

Furthermore, small and medium-sized businesses that have outgrown shared hosting or the limited resources of a shared hosting plan should use VPS hosting.

Tech-savvy bloggers or website owners may prefer the VPS hosting option because of its high customizability (including the best VPS in India and the top VPS in Australia).

InMotion – Best VPS Hosting Provider

Among various web hosting providers that offer VPS hosting plans, Inmotion is considered the best, with mouth-watering features and functionalities.

The root access InMotion grants website owners enable them to make custom changes to their virtual server, which is beneficial for tech-savvy users.

Every website owner can view and manage their VPS freely due to the free cPanel and WHM InMotion offers. Every VPS plans InMoton offer has a 90-days money-back guarantee.

3. Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated servers are considered the best web hosting option website owners can choose. This perception is because you have your own dedicated server without sharing your server's resources with another website.

With dedicated hosting, you enjoy more benefits than if you are on shared hosting plans, such as more uptime and faster speeds. Your site performance is at its optimal stage because you do not share resources with other sites.

With dedicated hosting, you have total technical control over the server setting. You can make decisions on the software, configurations, and every other relevant thing you require. Other features include extremely high uptime rates and lightning-fast loading speeds.

Pros

• The website owner has complete control over the server setting
• The whole server belongs to your website alone
• Uncapped bandwidth for DreamHost users

Cons

• Expensive to use

Who Should Use Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated hosting is perfect for an enterprise-level website with the budget to run it and for websites that want the best regarding excellent site performance and total control over server settings.

Since Dedicated hosting is the most expensive web hosting plan, only businesses that afford to subscribe can go for it.

The best-dedicated web hosting services include Hostgator, Bluehost, Liquid Web, DreamHost, and InMotion Hosting.

HostGator – Best Dedicated Hosting Provider

When comparing dedicated servers and their plans, HostGator is the best and offers the most affordable data plans.

An unmerited band switch is a vital feature of HostGator. These dedicated web servers can handle a ton of traffic load without any hitch in your site’s performance.

If you want to switch to dedicated hosting, choosing HostGator provides free domain registration for your first year. HostGator offers non-stop customer support for site owners.

4. WordPress Hosting

WordPress can be considered to be the most popular content management system and website platform common among new business owners.

Providers offer two main WordPress hosting.

• Shared WordPress Hosting: To run a shared WordPress host, the website owner must pre-install WordPress, and it functions the same way a regular shared hosting works. The best WordPress hosting services include Bluehost and SiteGround.
• Managed WordPress Hosting: This web hosting type has additional features such as server catching, faster loading speeds, and enhanced security.

Pros

• Access to certain WordPress benefits like one-click installations and free plugin licenses
• Optimized for WordPress
• Enhanced security for WordPress sites

Cons

• Not so flexible, and users don't have total control over the server settings.
• Sharing resources with other sites

Who Should Use WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting is typically for WordPress users and anyone interested in subscribing to a web hosting tailored to CMS.

SiteGround – Best WordPress Hosting Provider

SiteGround is perfect for individuals who want to build their online business website with high traffic, a blog, and a strong online presence. It is built on the Premium Google Cloud Infrastructure for maximum speed, reliability, and security.

With SiteGround, you can accelerate your website’s speed, which means your WordPress site will load faster, increasing your conversion rate and SEO ranking.

5. Cloud Server Hosting

Cloud hosting is a hosting solution that provides a limitless ability to handle traffic spikes effectively. It is similar to VPS but an upgraded version (Hybrid) which implies that cloud hosting has all the potential of VPS and more.

This type of web hosting offers multiple servers; each cloud server has different responsibilities. If one server develops problems or is not functioning well, other remote servers cover up for that server and maintain optimal performance.

Cloud hosting is a cheaper alternative to VPS if you look at the cloud hosting costs, with higher uptime rates, speed, and less downtime due to server error.

With the best cloud hosting plans, you can effortlessly scale your resources on demand, implying that you only have to pay for the resources you use.

The best cloud web hosting providers include Cloudways, SiteGround, A2 Hosting, Kamatera, and Hostwinds.

Pros

• Scale server resources on demand
• Highly secure
• Server customization
• Less unexpected downtime due to server error

Cons

• Cloud hosting has a complicated payment structure
• Unexpected traffic spikes can increase costs
• Not ideal for small businesses with a single server

Who Should Use Cloud Server Hosting

Cloud hosting is perfect for medium and large business websites growing rapidly. Site owners that want a high degree of scalability because of unpredictable traffic spikers they experience on their site can also subscribe to cloud hosting plans.

Cloudways – Best Cloud Hosting Provider

Cloudways offers excellent website uptime, which will help to keep your visitors and encourage more people to visit your site.

This web hosting type offers various eCommerce tools, including integration with the best eCommerce platforms such as Magento and Prestashop, which eCommerce site owners can use to improve performance.

As a managed cloud hosting platform, Cloudways have competent engineers that help to safeguard your installation from constant attacks by releasing regular OS and firmware upgrades. Cloudways offers 24/7 customer support for users that may require assistance.

6. Managed Hosting

Most hosting packages available online are likely to be managed. Managed hosting is in the form of a service rather than a hosting plan.

Private web hosting companies or service providers offer technical support like software and hardware setup, backups, configuration, and security monitoring. In other words, the service provider handles the day-to-day maintenance tasks with managed hosting.

Managed hosting can come in different flavors like managed shared plans, VPSs hosting, managed WordPress hosting, managed Dedicated servers, managed cloud hosting, managed on-premises data center, and managed shared hosting.

To keep this server running, you would be required to pay a little extra as opposed to when you have to be the one to carry out these tasks.

Pros

• Your provider handles the maintenance tasks for you
• Optimization of website performance

Cons

• More expensive than a regular web hosting plan
• Less control over the site’s optimization and server configuration

Who Should Use Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is perfect for every website owner who desires to eliminate the stress of running maintenance tasks personally.

DreamHost – Best Managed Hosting Provider

DreamHost’s custom control panel is easy to use and eliminates the stress of managing your web hosting.

For site owners with a slow website resulting in customers or visitors leaving and not returning to the site and their search engine ranking also reducing, DreamHost greatly helps them manage their website.

DreamHost offers 24/7 customer support to help you with any issues at any given time.

7. Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting has to do with the sales of hosting services to clients. This type of web hosting involves buying hosting from the main provider and reselling it to your clients.

You have total control over the price option you offer clients since you will also have to pay the main provider.

Reseller hosting is a lucrative venture with various benefits, including profit from your service. Most web hosts that offer reseller accounts make it possible to put the price you deem fit for your services.

The responsibility of handling your client’s hosting enables you to take proper care of their website maintenance and to ensure that everything works as it should.

Pros

• Reseller hosting is an upgrade to your existing service
• Additional avenue to generate income
• You have total control of the hosting experience

Cons

• The web host would require a reasonable number of clients to be able to venture into this service.
• High responsibility for maintenance and support tasks in most situations

Who Should Use Reseller Hosting

Reseller Hosting is perfect for web designers, developers, web hosting companies, and other web-related agencies.

A2 Hosting – Best Reseller Hosting Provider

A2 Hosting is fast and secure; these features and others make it the best reseller hosting provider on this list. You can deliver high uptime and fast loading speeds on a shared server with A2 Hosting.

This hosting provider offers a free Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS) with all reseller plans. This benefit makes effectively managing all your clients and their resources feasible.

A2 Hosting offers 24/7 customer service support which you can take advantage of in case of unexpected issues.

8. Colocation

Collocation can be an alternative to hosting an in-house data center or renting your dedicated server.

Suppose you own private servers. In that case, you can host them for an amount that will significantly cover the cost of electricity, bandwidth, cooling, IP address, and server monitoring/maintenance.

You are expected to bring your storage, servers, and networking equipment. Furthermore, your responsibility still includes server software management, IP/DNS configurations, and hardware replacement when necessary.

With collocation, various enterprises have reduced the size of their data center since it is costly to maintain.

Pros

• Cheaper than using an on-premises data center
• Total control over your equipment
• Great option as a disaster recovery site

Cons

• Costly for small businesses
• Technical knowledge required to run
• Long-term commitment

Who Should Use Colocation Hosting

Collocation is perfect for medium and large businesses without an existing server environment.

Equinix – Best Colocation Hosting Provider

As a hosting provider, Equinix uses advanced security equipment, procedures, and techniques to effectively monitor and control access to their International Business Exchange™ data centers.

Equinix has various relevant certifications in sustainable energy security and efficiency, which make them the best choice.

Certain precautions are implemented to ensure that all equipment is fully functional at an optimal level. Each data center contains a multicomponent temperature control system to ensure that the servers remain functional.

Which Type of Hosting is Best For My Website?

Choosing the best hosting for your website may be difficult with the different types of web hosting available. You may be tempted to choose the cheapest option as a small business owner, resulting in website lags, downtimes, and slow loading speeds.

Large enterprises with large web hosting needs may opt for the most expensive option that offers more capability than they need but proves costly, especially when a cheaper option adequately covers their website needs.

How do you balance price, speed, performance, and other factors when choosing the best hosting type for your website? Here are our top five web hosting types to consider.

Before choosing the best web hosting type for your website, research to ascertain if it is the best option. Here are some resources to help you out:

• Bluehost Review
• Bluehost vs SiteGround
• Bluehost vs HostGator
• HostGator Review
• Hostinger Review
• Cost to Host a Website
• Cheap Web Hosting Services
• Fastest Web Hosting Services

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