Matching Your Business’ Needs with a Hosting Provider – The Perfect Fit

Having a website used to be optional for businesses – those days are long gone. The Internet as a whole is nothing close to a new concept, but it’s only as of late that the masses have really started turning to the web when looking to spend their money on whatever it is they want to spend it on. In fact, the vast majority already consults the web before buying pretty much anything that costs more than $10, which means that those businesses attracting the clicks are also scoring the biggest wins.     As such, it’s never been more vital to ensure a perfect fit when it comes to the web hosting service a business chooses to keep its site in operation. And this does NOT mean just finding the cheapest hosting service that’s willing to get things up and running for you – finding the perfect fit means understanding exactly what’s on offer.

Shared hosting

Almost every hobbyist, small business and general web newcomer out there will opt for a shared hosting package – most of which won’t cost more than about $10 per month. This is basically the kind of hosting whereby your website and all its data occupy a piece of a hard drive that’s also used by any number of other sites – none of which of course have access to your data. It’s a bit like the youth hostel approach to web hosting.The fact that you’re sharing resources with other businesses makes for spectacularly low prices and the simplest service packages out there. However, it also means you get very little overall control of the server and may experience slowdowns if any of the other sites temporarily bogarts its resources.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Where virtual private servers step things up all comes down to the sharing or resources…or more specifically the lack thereof. This is the kind of hosting where you’re still technically using a single shared computer, but you actually have a certain segment of resources allocated to you that no other site or business can chow down on. You get a little more control over the server’s features and you’re guaranteed no slowdowns, hence why the price goes up just a little bit.

Dedicated servers

An upper-end option is that of a private server, which for all intents and purposes means taking ownership…at least on a rental basis…of the whole computer and every last drop of its resources. All power is dedicated to you, all space is yours to play with and all features are under your exclusive control. These kinds of packages sometimes come in at ten-times the price of shared hosting, but are absolute musts for big business.

Co-location Packages

A less common option is the co-location hosting package, which is technically similar to the dedicated server package aside from the fact that the business buys the servers outright and pays for an external facility to run and manage them.As for making the right choice, it’s all about balancing what your site and your business actually needs in conjunction with the budget you can afford to spend on hosting. Make a list of your most essential needs and get in touch with a reputable hosting company to discuss a bespoke package.