Overview
Web hosting is where your website lives. Think of it as a building and your website is one of the units in it. Here let us discuss the 3 different types of web hosting that are suitable for small business owners or even home-business side hustlers. We will be using the building analogy to simplify your understanding of web hosting. If you do not know what web hosting is, give a 3-minute read on what is web hosting. You will have a much better understanding to choose which hosting type suits you best.
1. Shared Hosting
Let’s start by using the building analogy. As mentioned earlier, shared hosting is where you rent a room in one unit. It is like renting a room in HDB and not the whole unit. There are limitations as privacy is concerned. The same goes for websites, however, on a much larger scale. When you host your website with any shared hosting plan from companies like Hostinger, Siteground, and many others, your website will be on one server together with thousands of other users that purchased shared hosting plans. This means you share the server’s resources.
For example, shared hosting plans are usually powered by a computer with 2 CPU cores and 1 GB RAM average. The CPU and the RAM determine the speed of your website when someone visits. Let’s get back to the building analogy: a CPU core is like the water tank for the building, and the RAM is the electricity. See, if you rent a room in real life, it is sufficient for your daily needs and those of other roommates. Heck, we never even think of such issues when we want to rent a room. Who would ask the landlord, “Are the water and electricity available?” Of course, it is! Or worse, “…is it enough for everyone?”
Again, the same goes for shared hosting; it will be enough for 90% of website owners for their websites to run. In this case, a server may host thousands of users, some maybe hundreds of thousands, depending on where you got your hosting from, sharing the same resources, which are 2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM. Your phone has more power than this!
This is why most of us will get by with shared hosting. The reason why it is so cheap and affordable is that your website will be on the same server as other users that use shared hosting plans.
If you are looking to create a static website just to display your core services and brief introduction or have less than 1000 visitors per month, shared hosting is perfect. Note that 1000 visitors per month is a lot! Imagine having 1000 people visit your house every month. Many experts have concluded that shared hosting is perfect for the mass majority. The other types, which we will discuss, are more for power users like those selling online or booking systems that require more power, or else their visitors will experience a slow-loading website.
Advantages of Shared Hosting:
- Cost-Effective: Affordable for beginners and small businesses.
- Ease of Use: Usually comes with user-friendly control panels.
- Maintenance: The hosting provider handles server maintenance and updates.
Many web hosting companies offer different tiers of shared hosting plans. The higher tier usually comes with more features and more resources per server. If you are looking for emails and subdomains like (https://name.yoursite.com - “name” is the subdomain), most higher-tier plans provide these features.
Recommendation: There are two companies I recommend to get in Singapore: Hostinger and Siteground. Both have datacenters in Singapore, meaning if you are a local business owner, no matter the size, you should have your website hosting stored locally. Hostinger provides dead-cheap and basic features enough for most of us, while Siteground offers more speed and features as they use the latest hardware and systems in their servers, but at a much higher price. Suitable for power users but still want to save some for their next Nasi Lemak hunting with families.
2. VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Server)
Don’t get intimidated by the term VPS. It is commonly misunderstood that VPS hosting is a higher tier than Cloud Hosting. In fact, VPS is somewhat similar to shared hosting, but there are significant performance differences. So from what we have learned, shared hosting is where your website is hosted on the same server with shared resources. While VPS hosting is where your website is hosted on the same server with dedicated resources. So instead of having shared resources, you are getting dedicated resources just for you. Hence the “private” terminology is used.
VPS users will still share a physical server in data centers with other VPS users. Each user will benefit from their own resources depending on the plan the user purchased. For example, if each server has 35 CPU cores, and depending on the VPS plan you got 2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM (we use this example), the server will isolate 2 cores and 1GB RAM for you and only you. Do you see the difference between shared hosting? What do you think of the performance spike here?
Yes, it is a lot faster since you don’t share your resources.
However, there are a few caveats here. VPS hosting requires technical skills to access and configure at the server level. Have you ever seen a movie where a so-called hacker has this black window on their computer with lines scrolling through as if they are hacking someone? Well, you will be facing that interface to work with, which may be very intimidating just to have a website. Most of us just want a website running, without having to deal with these command prompts or codes if you want to call them.
Advantages of VPS Hosting:
- Better Performance: Dedicated resources mean better speed and reliability.
- Flexibility: More control over the server environment.
- Scalability: Easier to upgrade resources as your website grows.
Most web agencies use VPS to manage their client’s hosting; this is what we use whenever you get “host-with-us” plans. We will still consider this as shared hosting in our features. Since you are sharing our VPS server with other clients that use the “Basic” plan, you will notice that our hosting price plan is a lot higher than most of the other web hosting companies like Hostinger, Siteground and many others. This is because you don’t share resources with thousands of other strangers. Instead, you will share resources with only OUR clients, and also, we will do the setup and configuration for you so you can have fast loads of websites.
3. Cloud Hosting
This is the 2nd tier of hosting. The first tier is having your own server, which is another whole different topic. To be honest, we don’t even use Cloud Hosting to host our client’s websites due to its power and complexity for setting up, configurations, security, and many more. It is a powerhouse to host large enterprises like Netflix, Airbnb, etc. Can you imagine the level of complexity there?
However, today, Cloud Hosting is made available for users who want powerful hosting and, at the same time, reduce the setup and configurations at the server level mentioned earlier. This type of hosting is called Managed Cloud Hosting, which companies like Cloudways provide.
Before we get more into Managed Cloud Hosting, we need to understand Cloud Hosting. Cloud Hosting is a well-known term for websites hosted on the Cloud Platform, but few of us know that there are two different types: Unmanaged Cloud Hosting and Managed Cloud Hosting.
Types of Cloud Hosting:
- Unmanaged Cloud Hosting: For IT experts as it provides 100% control to host anything and not just only websites.
- Managed Cloud Hosting: A service for simpler usage for websites, apps, e-Commerce, and many more with the advantage of high computing power.
This is where Managed Cloud Hosting has a premium price because they do the configuration/setup at the server level for you.
Some web agencies did not disclose where your website is hosted, as this is due to the complex terminology, understanding of web hosting, and how the whole system works. However, they will let you know at least which company your website is hosted with. Some may claim they host on their own company, which is basically white-labeling their hosting provider. This sketchy information provided may hinder your website’s ability to upscale in the future.
In Conclusion
Don’t get overwhelmed by the types of hosting; shared hosting is everyone’s starting point for their website. Shared hosting is suitable for beginners who want to just get their simple portfolio website up and running. 99% of you do not need hosting higher than this.
Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or need further clarification on which type of hosting you should choose.