The field of hosting is quite large and it is continuing to evolve and expand. There are a plethora of different service providers on the market, each offering divergent features, functionalities and products. This, consequently, results in newcomers being overwhelmed by the amount of information, making their choices difficult. However, in this article we are going to shine some light on what the different hosting alternatives are while putting special focus on VPS servers due to some companies like VPSBG allowing you to pay for them using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin & Litecoin, making them quite versatile. By the end of this article you will also know everything to make the most optimal choice when it comes to selecting a hosting provider.
What are the most famous hosting options?
There are predominantly 3 alternatives that you can choose from when it comes to hosting – shared hosting, dedicated instances and virtual private servers. Each of these has their own benefits and disadvantages which we will now briefly discuss.
Shared hosting is the cheapest option that you can go for due to the fact that you will be required to share the server’s resources with the other occupying users. This means that if for example another website, which is also hosted on the same server as your web application, sees an unexpected influx of traffic, it will start consuming more resources. This will result in your website or app being deprived of some essential resources, which will then mean that it can become significantly slower, taking a lot longer to load. This can have a negative impact on your users and their dissatisfaction can be reflected by a higher bounce rate or a drop off in search engine rankings. Because of this, it is not recommended to use shared hosting if you have a larger website that deals with customer queries, shopping, general ecommerce or any other web application type that is required to perform multiple concurrent information-exchange operations. Overall, this is the cheapest hosting option, but its limitations make it viable for websites or apps that do not expect to deal with a large amount of user traffic.
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Dedicated instances are the complete opposite of shared hosting as they allow you to have the entire server just for yourself. While this is quite beneficial as you will not have to deal with any additional problems in relation to other users and the server’s resources, this comes at a rather hefty price. Given that you are getting a whole server, the overall price will be substantially larger than what you would expect to pay for shared hosting. Because of this, these servers are typically recommended for large companies, business and service providers that need the resources and the server just for themselves. Such companies usually deal with many user requests on a daily basis and are expected to perform under severe traffic circumstances. If you have extra money to spare, you can always go for a dedicated instance, but again, do keep in mind that they are quite expensive and in most situations are not necessary for your website or application to operate smoothly. But is not there an option that can combine the best of both worlds? Well, yes – virtual private servers, commonly abbreviated as VPS.
VPS servers utilize virtualization technology to create separate individual virtual machines which are all running on the same server. Each machine has its own independent resources allowing you to have the best of both worlds – sharing a server but having your own personal resources. Additionally, you also get the opportunity to scale your server, meaning that you can add more resources including processing power, active memory (RAM) or storage if you happen to see an increase in traffic. Moreover, if you are currently paying for more than you are actually using, you can also downgrade your server and spend less overall. Not only that but a VPS server is surprisingly affordable, considering the amount of features that it can offer. You also get full SSH root access to your server allowing you to install any additional software that might be useful for managing your website or server in general. Considering all of this, it is unsurprising that many users tend to go for a VPS server. But what should you look for in a hosting provider?
Important hosting provider features
The first thing that your hosting provider needs to be able to offer you are snapshots and backups. These are both incredibly useful when it comes to storing and restoring your website or web application if for example there was a total server wipeout, outage or hacker attack.
Staying on the topic of hacker attacks, what you also need to look out for is whether your provider can offer you reliable DDoS protection. DDoS attacks are quite common and are essentially fake traffic targeted at your site or app, designed to overload the server and ultimately crash it, resulting in your website being inaccessible until it is restarted and up and running again.
Source: auhost4u.com
Additionally, you can also check if your provider can supply you with any additional IP addresses for your website or application. These IPs are usually referred to as ‘floating’ and can guarantee you that your site will not crash even if it does fall victim to a DDoS attack due the fact that only the original IP of your website or application will be the primary target.
Alternative payment methods are also quite important, especially if you want to purchase a server internationally. Using traditional transaction options such as bank transfers and PayPal can be quite expensive for international payments. Because of this, having a hosting provider with a viable service payment alternative can be quite beneficial.
Finally, if you want to have your server run on a particular operating system such as Windows, you need to make sure that your provider can provide you with a license for it. You could also manually go ahead and purchase one on your own, but this feature will save you a lot of time, hassle and effort in the long run.
That’s it from us for now. We hope that this article has been helpful and that you can now make a choice regarding your hosting type and provider by taking our suggestions into consideration. Stay tuned for more content on this topic!
