Are you currently looking to build your first domain name for your business? Are you unsure of what the right specifications are for hosting that domain name? There are lots of different options out there for hosting a website that sometimes the process can become a little confusing and this guide is here to help making it a little easier. First we would definitely suggest that this guide shouldn’t be your only go to reference on this topic. The first thing you should really consider in choosing a hosting type and therefore hosting company, is the requirements of what you are trying to build. If you have an existing website that was previously developed by a development individual or company, you should first speak with them and use them to come up with their recommendations for the server. Sometimes they may use the fact that you don’t know much about what you actually really need, to their advantage to put you into a server that really is outside your needs and really you could go with something cheaper as an alternative. So always ask possible more than one developer to see what their recommendations are and see if they both come to a similar conclusion or if one ends up being a whole lot more than the other recommendations, then you know that the cheaper option was something you can trust more.
The different types of web servers that a company can host with include shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers and colocation servers. There can also be different variations of those types but those are the key types. Also there is now something called cloud hosting, which is where a cloud or a group of web servers will host your web server which allows for a lot of flexibility, however some web applications may have issues with being hosted in this way. Shared hosting is probably the most common and probably all you will need, especially if this is your first time building a website and especially if your website isn’t all that complex. You should consider shared for example if all you are trying to do is host a site that has information on your business.
Then there is colocation, dedicated and virtual hosting, these are all mostly the same thing, especially the first two. VPS or virtual hosting is a mix between a shared hosting environment and a dedicated server. A VPS machine, allows you root access to the server, so you can install whatever you want on the machine, but the server isn’t just handling your business, it’s handling several other companies as well. If you’ve guessed it, a dedicated server is the same as VPS, but it only hosts your websites. All of these options are best if you want to host more than probably 10 websites on a machine, or if you have a very complex web application that needs unique software to run correctly or just needs more resources to run.
Colocation is just like a dedicated server, except you are just renting space on a rack at a server farm location, where you’ve purchased the server yourself and you are paying them to protect the server, either from people on the web or from people walking into and stealing the server. This option also provides the internet connection and uninterrupted internet connection to the facility where your server is located. This is probably one of the best options if you have several servers and you want a cheaper solution.