First of all we must determine the meaning of the word “hosting”. So, what is hosting?
Hosting origins from the word “host” which has different meanings that are familiar to you. Hosting means providing place for your website on the web hosting company’s servers and makes it viewable in the Internet
and floating it.

Why can you once need hosting?

Imagine that you have created a website and now you are wondering how
your friends and acquaintances can see it. You place it in your personal computer, but then you come to know that it’s dangerous for your computer’s safety and needs permanent Internet connection. So it causes a lot of inconveniences for you. To avoid them there is web site hosting.

There are different kinds of web site hosting. Let’s have a good look at them:
1.Shared or virtual hosting
2.Dedicated hosting/ server, Co-location
3.VDS/VPS –Virtual Dedicated Server/Virtual Private Server

Before choosing some type of web hosting it’s necessary to consider the way you are going to use it.

Free Shared hosting

If you want to host some non-profit-making or your personal web site it’d be more profitable to use basic shared hosting for no fee. This type of web site hosting is a rather logical choice if you are a junior in web site building or if you want to try some new idea and don’t want to pay. But of course you don’t have to suppose it to grant your site the best conditions, such as proper bandwidth and disk space. Some other features can also be limited, I mean MySQL, PHP support. It often also provides poor web statistics.

Paid Shared hosting

Almost all small businesses, intermediate and large professional sites use shared hosting, ‘cause they don’t need the whole server’s space and besides the whole server costs much. With shared/virtual hosting such necessary features, as multiply e-mail, MySQl, PHP, are supported. The main disadvantage is decrease of your site’s security.

Dedicated hosting /Server

This type of hosting is the best choice for those, who need much storage and bandwidth, and are good in server administration. You’ll be able to use all necessary software, but if you don’t have enough knowledge to administrate your server it will be a little bit difficult for you.

Co-location

It’s a sub type of dedicated hosting and can be compared with your own house which was built specially for you, with your favorite furniture and all. It’s built on your hoster’s (ISP) ground. This service is implied to fulfill only your tasks and is designed for your needs alone. And it’s cost is correspondingly high.

VDS/ VPS

Virtual private server is a type of web site hosting that is based on dividing a physical server into several virtual ones. It costs less though gives same possibilities as Dedicated server. Now, when we’ve examined different types of hosting services, you can decide which type of hosting is the most suitable for you.


MOD NOTE: Post edited for promotional material.

Good post. You cannot advertise yourself though. Please refer to article 3.4 in the forum rules: http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/rules.php

Note that free shared hosting sometimes comes at the expenses of having ads forced onto your website (such as AdSense). Depending on the nature of your website, this could be a small or large price to pay.

Cheers,
Roj

A good article. Thanks for sharing.

Great article for basic info on types of hosting. Adding 2 more:

Reseller Hosting

This type of hosting is for those wanting to resell hosting to their own clients, without the need to lease or purchase their own server. This is an affordable alternative to those that don't want to maintain their own servers or do not have that many customers yet. Reselling hosting can enable the reseller to concentrate on reselling hosting.

Multi-Domain Hosting

This type of hosting is for developers and website owners who have more than 2 websites. You can pay one fee and host multiple domain names, with multiple control panels and separate area for each content of the different websites. Multi-domain hosting is also referred to as Reseller hosting.