Which web site hosting plan will be most optimal for me?

There are different kinds of web hosting solutions appropriate for different sites in relation to the resources or the website hosting environment they require. To select the most relevant hosting service for your web site, you need to evaluate what server-side software it demands, how many hits per day you anticipate at the beginning and in the long run, as well as any other specific needs that may have to be answered.

Shared Web Hosting - Strong Points

The best choice for small sites with a few hundred or webspace hosting, each client pays only for their account, which diminishes the overall cost per person considerably. There are diverse web hosting solutions varying from one hosting corporation to another, delivering different amounts of data storage space and bandwidth, different electronic mail account quotas and so on. The advantage is that you can order a plan that will provide the specifications your website actually requires. You will not have to pay lots of cash for a package you will not utilize, or end up with a small scale plan that cannot host the site. At Radspace, there is a large collection of shared hosting packages appropriate for personal or small business websites that even come with pre-installed script-powered systems such as Joomla, Mambo, Drupal or WordPress - to render things simpler. If you start with a low-end plan and you demand more resources, moving to a more powerful package takes only a click of the mouse.

Shared Web Hosting - Weaknesses

A drawback of the shared web site hosting solution is that the hosting servers have some software programs installed on them and you are unable to install new software. Specific online portals, especially web stores, need software applications to be present on the web hosting server for them to operate, and with a shared web site hosting package, you can install solely software programs that do not demand server root access.

Private Virtual Servers and Dedicated Servers

For online portals that need complete root-level access, or if your web page has many thousands or even millions of hits per day, what you need is a VPS or a dedicated server. A virtual web hosting server is a software emulation of a dedicated hosting server and it works in a strictly identical manner.

Virtual Private Web Hosting Servers

Both environments normally give full root-level access and can be rebooted via a software program by the user, independently from the hosting supplier. Just like the shared hosting packages, the private virtual web hosting server and the dedicated web hosting server plans sport diverse characteristics based on what the web hosting company has to offer. A private virtual web hosting server account offers guaranteed web space, random access memory and CPU usage quotas that can sometimes be expanded for short intervals of time if there are unused resources on the physical server. With a dedicated web server, the only limitation is the hardware equipment it is availing of, and it can be revamped by altering or adding components. A VPS web server is simpler to handle as it offers a virtualization tool, which can be used to restart it, to install software applications, monitor stats, and so on. The management of a dedicated web server is more complicated, so such a package would rather be resorted to by knowledgeable customers.

Dedicated Servers

Still, given web hosting providers offer managed dedicated web hosting services where they implement web hosting server management tasks on behalf of the client. This can be a part of plan or an additional upgrade.

Before You Select...

Choosing the top hosting plan is important as it can have an effect on the proper work of a web portal. Prior to settling on a plan, compare the pros and cons, survey thoroughly all the preconditions for the web portal to run properly, especially if it is script-driven, and, last but not least, if you have already picked a company, the best you could do would be to ask their support staff for a suggestion as to which package exactly would be best for the stable work of your website.