Which web hosting solution will serve me best?

There are various types of web hosting packages appropriate for different web sites with regard to the resources or the web hosting platform they need. To select the most proper hosting service for your web portal, you must evaluate what server-side software programs it demands, how many visits per day you expect at the beginning and in the long run, as well as any other specific demands that may need to be satisfied.

Shared Website Hosting - Positive Sides

The most relevant choice for small websites with several hundred or web space hosting, each client pays only for their plan, which decreases the overall cost per client radically. There are different web hosting solutions differing from one hosting company to another, providing different quotas of server storage and web traffic, different email box account quotas and so on. The good point is that you can order a plan that will provide the specifications your site really requires. You will not need to pay lots of cash for an account you will not utilize, or wind up with a small size package that cannot host the online portal. At Duty Free Hosting, there is an immense assortment of shared hosting solutions suitable for private or small business sites that even provide pre-installed script-powered platforms such as Joomla, Mambo, Drupal or WordPress - to make things easier. If you kick off with a low-price plan and you demand more functionalities, moving to a more powerful account takes only a click of the mouse.

Shared Hosting - Shortcomings

A negative side of the shared hosting platform is that the servers have some software platforms installed on them and you cannot install additional software applications. Specific websites, particularly online storefronts, need software applications to be activated on the server for them to perform, and with a shared site hosting platform, you can activate only software that does not need root access.

Virtual Private Web Hosting Servers and Dedicated Web Hosting Servers

For web pages that request full server root access, or if your web portal has many 1000's or even millions of hits per day, what you require is a VPS or a dedicated server. A virtual private web hosting server is a virtual imitation of a dedicated machine and it performs in strictly the same manner.

Virtual Private Hosting Servers

Both services usually come with full server root access and can be restarted through a software program by the user, independently from the hosting provider. Much like the shared web site hosting packages, the VPS and the dedicated web server packages contain diverse specifications based on what the hosting vendor offers. A private virtual web hosting server account offers guaranteed web space, random access memory and CPU usage quotas that can occasionally be expanded for brief intervals of time in case there are free resources on the physical machine. With a dedicated web server, the only limitation is the hardware equipment it is using, and it can be revved up by changing or adding components. A VPS is simpler to tackle as it involves a virtualization console, which can be utilized to reboot it, to install applications, examine statistics, etc. The administration of a dedicated web server is more intricate, so such a plan would rather be resorted to by trained users.

Dedicated Hosting Servers

However, some web hosting providers provide managed dedicated web hosting services where they implement web hosting server management tasks instead of the customer. This can be included in the package or an extra option.

Before You Decide...

Choosing the top hosting package is crucial as it can have an effect on the proper operation of a online portal. Prior to settling on an account, compare the pros and cons, survey carefully all the prerequisites for the web portal to work properly, particularly if it is script-based, and, last but not least, if you have already selected a web hosting corporation, the best thing to do would be to ask their support staff for a recommendation as to which plan exactly would be best for the proper operation of your web portal.