Customer Satisfaction Ratingsof the most popular hosting companies in 2009
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Shared Hosting, VPS and Dedicated Web HostingWith the rapid advancement of internet services web hosting has become a much sought after activity as far as online businesses are concerned. A web hosting company provides you the space to 'host' either your personal homepage or your business profile and webpage. Using a web hosting company can prove very beneficial to you, as even your prospective employers might want to take a look at your personal thoughts and other details from your very own web page. Businesses too can be successfully expanded and consolidated over the internet by building great networks through your business website. For all of this to work, one must understand the importance of web hosting. There are several types of web hosting like shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, free hosting, paid hosting and clustered hosting. While choosing a web host for yourself, choose among these available ones but according to your needs and demands. Three common kinds of web hosting are as follows: Shared hostingIn simple terms, this is a situation where a solitary server hosts and supports several web pages. This suits fledgling businesses perfectly who are unable to spend large to acquire dedicated servers and therefore does away with other expenses like maintaining a system administrator. In case of shared hosting, various maintenance features like server management, security updates, server software and anti-virus backup are provided by the provider of the shared hosting. Web hosting is primarily done in two ways: the IP address based way and the name based way. In the IP address way, the host who has his own individual IP address provides each of the sites he hosts with their own SSL certificate, thereby endowing a sense of security to the websites. While for name based hosting, the various web sites hosted are provided with a single IP address which is to be used by all. Using a shared host might come cheap, but it comes without the sense of security that is there in IP based hosting. There are also several other disadvantages of the name based hosting system like its incompatibility with relatively old browsers. A HTTP/1.0 browser without up gradation will fail to send out requests carrying the host name. Also because they share same digital certificates, Hand name based hosts cannot support HTPPS websites either. And if the Domain Name System or the DNS conks out any website hosted by a name based web host becomes virtually impossible to access. Despite the cost effectiveness of a shared web hosting system, some of its other problems are that of disk space, CPU and Bandwidth of your website being affected or slowed down because of other sites using the same server. Control over certain system level things like scripts and the system software being used is also beyond your control if you are on a shared hosting system. But if your website is relatively small you can comfortably make do without such features. If such things do bother you and you want some control over the things that power your website, you might want to know about Virtual Private Server or VPS. Virtual Private ServerA VPS like a shared server also has one server only, but the software of the system divides it into several 'virtual machines'. Therefore though the server's total resources are still shared by the various websites being hosted but each such VPS gets their own allotment of RAM, disk space etc and operate completely independently using the allocated resources. Because you are granted this much greater freedom as compared to a shared host, you can do various things from running a totally different OS to having your own scripts and software of choice, without affecting the other sites on the server. The root level access to the main server that you get in a VPS is virtually similar to the freedoms associated with dedicated servers. Only in case of a VPS you can install software of your choice, create accounts etc all at a comparatively lesser price than a dedicated server. Because of the internal division of a VPS system, the sense of security is much greater than a shared hosting service. In the latter, all sites are at a risk if the main server is hacked into, but that is not the case in a VPS system. The division of the server generally occurs evenly with the total resources being distributed equally among the number of websites that are sharing the server. Therefore if there are 10 websites on a VPS server, everything from the disk space to the RAM is divided by 10, with each website getting 10% of the whole. Dedicated hostingDedicated hosting facilities are meant for individuals and big businesses who are eager to take control of not only their websites but also the functioning process of the web host. A dedicated server offers people the benefit of doing that because as the name suggests, in this case a single website is hosted by a single server. The freedom ad control here is manifold, as the website owner has only to look into the web software related matters and can exercise his freedom as far as that is concerned. While other issues like security, power supervision and data maintenance etc are looked after by the hosting company. If your website requirements are large bandwidth, greater resources like disk space and if you are looking for a high quality, customized server, opting for a dedicated host seems to be the perfect solution. You can then choose a host of features for your website like operating system, settings, software and multi-media necessities. A dedicated hosting service is also the answer to all those who cannot afford to purchase a server of their own, but want similar services. A dedicated server can also bail you out and save expenses upto 85%, if your website has a high traffic count but you do not have the monitory resources and technical know how to maintain, install and run your own IT staff, programs that will run everything smoothly and most of all if you can't pay for a network administrator. Using a dedicated server also offers 100% assurance and security to you, because you know that you are the only one who is using this server. Apart from security concerns, not having other sites on the server also nullifies issues about downtime problems. Companies that need to have client databases and other important information up on their sites are bound to feel much safer using a managed dedicated host which provides the client with an extra layer of data security. While shared web hosts come cheaper, they also come with the heavy burdens of ominous security concerns and accessibility concerns if other sites face heavy traffic at any point. Using a dedicated server might cost a lot more, but provides you with the comfort and knowledge that you are using a thousand time safer server and one that shouldn't be slowed down by traffic of other websites. A dedicated server, therefore, is perfect for those looking to expand and grow in their businesses. |
