While there are many specific types of web hosting, all hosting solutions fit into one of these three technical categories:
http://webmaster.helpisland.com/hostingtypes.html
- Shared Hosting - Shared hosting is when you rent a portion of a server - like renting an office room in an office building. Usually shared hosting packages are sufficient for basic web sites. If requested, your hosting provider will reserve your own domain name (www.yourname.com) and provide you with email at your domain name yourname@yourname.com). Or if you reserved your own domain name in advance, your web host will provide you with the information necessary to “hook it up” to your web server. Pricing in the category of shared web hosting can range from free to over $100/month dependent on the service offerings.
- Dedicated Hosting - This is when you rent an entire server - like renting an entire office building. Once you have your server you can put whatever you would like on it, your choice of applications, your choice of data. You can store whatever you need on a dedicated server with fewer restrictions than that of a shared hosting solution. Low end dedicated servers start around $100/month, and go up from there.
- Co-located Hosting - This is when you actually buy the server, hardware, and software. Your server is then monitored and connected to the web from a data center. This gives you the most control of your server - not only do you choose what to put on your server, but what technology will be hardwired to the physical machine itself. Frequent clients of co-located services are web hosting providers, because they want 100% control and ownership of their servers. Co-located services are for companies or individuals in need of mission-critical hosting operations. Co-located web hosting prices are not usually based on specific pricing plans as the prices vary greatly on each individual client’s needs.
