This is general overview for people confused about what type of web hosting to purchase.

• Shared Hosting - This is geared toward personal websites, small businesses, or any website just starting out.
  
• VPS (Virtual Private Server) - This is for the the website that is on their way up, which means you usually have spikes of traffic, but the server demand is not consistent or extreme enough for a dedicated server. These packages also give one more control over your web hosting.
  
• Basic or Low End Dedicated Server - If you have recently established a web presence that demands consistent resources, this is probably the best place for you. These servers work very well for most basic web services. Do not purchase these if you have a large amount of back end processing.
  
• Intermediate or Mid-Grade Dedicated Server - These servers can handle more back end processing, and they can handle a heavier load than the starter dedicated servers. These servers can run most medium to high demand websites.
  
• Enterprise Dedicated Servers - These servers can handle anything that doesn't require a server farm. This is what you need before you have to establish your own data center to keep up with the demands of your website. They are tough, and should handle just about any job.
  
• Collocation - If you live near colocation services and you own your own server, this is a great way to get lightning fast internet speeds and have a nice cool place to store your server at hopefully a reasonable price. Your mileage may vary.

There is obviously some gray area between the different types of services, but this should give most people a general idea. For example, you can find some VPS 's that are as tough as some dedicated servers. Also, you should always consider the important specs that are important to your website or project, e.g. bandwidth, hd space, memory, etc.

cool thanks for this. I almost went VPS hosting when I didn't need it

Good simple explanation! I'm sure people would appreciate this.

Thanks to giving a knowledge about hosting services.

Well, actually while deciding which hosting you need is basically depends upon the requirements of your website.

props on the easy to understand description.

Great article, thanks SwarmHost for sharing. I am still in the shared hosting stage, as I have only a website and some blogs with very small traffic. Anyway, my website provides freebies (mostly free ebooks) to download. Do you think I need to move to VPS earlier than I do with a general website getting the same traffic?

I'm glad to see that this information is beneficial for some people. I know I was completely lost when I was first building websites.

Sherwood: It is likely that you will need to move up more quickly than most websites since you have content to download. On the other hand, ebooks aren't terribly large files, and there should be less CPU and memory usage. If you have a decent amount of bandwidth (not unlimited), you should be fine for a while.

What about semi-dedicated hosting? You left out that option.

Well, any class hosting solution except shared (and probably Cloud) requires a certain level of technical expertise and that's why many people get confused. The different niches aren't precisely defined can couldn't be... especially when it comes to virtualization.

Good information about web hosting. It will help newbie to choose any hosting company. Thanks for sharing, share something different related to web hosting criteria.

Thank you very much for the information you've shared to all the posters in this forum. It's indeed a great help to everyone and to avoid confusion as well.

Thanks, I guess so. You are right. My free ebook size are not so large as music or video file size are. Their sizes varies from 500 KB to 1.5 MB. But I am using a shared hosting package with "unlimited" bandwidth.

Good information, Although I do think you left Reseller Hosting out.

There is all types of web hosting for all types of sites. When your searching for a web host, Be sure about it and do some reaching up on it!

Thanks mate for the article. It was simple and right to the point.