As the name suggests, the shared hosting is the one where you host your website along with many other websites. On a shared hosting different websites sit on the same server where these websites share the hosting space, RAM, bandwidth and other resources as well. Most of the shared web hosting providers claims to provide unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited RAM as well. But actually these are not unlimited, there is a fair usage policy applies. Sometimes you might be able to consume even 20GB space but at some other time; your account could be suspended even after consuming the 10GB storage.

Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting type where you can host your website for as low as $12 a year. This hosting service is best for the beginners who just want to showcase your portfolio and they don’t have to run heavy scripts and they don’t have good web traffic as well. The user is not responsible to manage the server. A C-panel is mostly provided in all shared hosting packages which can be used to install different scripts and to manage the websites.

A VPS is a Virtual Private Server. This is the most famous hosting type for relatively large websites or ecommerce stores. On a VPS, you don’t have your own private server, but the resources you have are actually your own. You are still sharing the same server with other people but you are not sharing your resources. You can understand it with a simple example of computer’s hard disk. A computer’s hard disk may have different partitions like C, D, E and so on. Let’s say D is the driver where you have hosted your website. If D drive hosts many other websites as well, then it means you have a shared hosting plan whereas, if D drive is only in your control and no other person can host his/her files on D drive then it means you are using a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. The same server may have other websites hosted at drive E or F, but not at drive D.

A VPS is relatively costly solution than shared hosting but it is still very much affordable if we compare it with the cost of a dedicated hosting server. We can say that a VPS is an intermediate of shred hosting and the dedicated hosting solution.

While purchasing a VPS, you can select whether you want a managed or unmanaged VPS for you? A managed VPS will have a C-panel or WHM whereas unmanaged VPS don’t have such graphical user interface. You have to manage your unmanaged VPS hosting account with a command lined interface.

Another type of web hosting service is to buy a dedicated server for your website. In Dedicated hosting, a standalone server is provided to host your website and it will not share any space or other resources with anyone else. On a dedicated server, the user has complete access to a Super-user as well and can install almost any software that is supported by the OS of that server.

The problem with dedicated servers is that it is somehow difficult to manage because most of the dedicated hosting packages are unmanaged. The user should have a good knowledge about the customization and configuration of the software or other utilities which are required to host a website.

Dedicated web hosting servers are good for large companies and for the sites which have a high volume of traffic. If your website need a lot of resources like if you are hosting high definition images, audio or video streaming then dedicated server should be your choice. Few good web hosting providers provide a managed dedicated hosting as well, but that comes with some extra charges. So if you can afford, you can get managed dedicated server as well.

Cloud hosting is just like a Virtual Private Server. Though it is better than a VPS but the basic structure is the same. Cloud hosting is a server which is virtual and not a dedicated one and it is private as well that no other person is using your resources.

Most of the people describe the cloud hosting as a product which hosts your data on multiple machines which works altogether. But this is not true. In easy words, a cloud works as a VMware’s Fault Tolerance (FT). The virtual machine creates a live shadow instance that creates instant backup of the data or we can say of virtual machine. In case of hardware failure, the system automatically creates a new instance on a new hardware. This is how cloud hosting works. In some aspects, a cloud hosting is better than a simple VPS. For example, you have to pay only for the resources which you are using. Usually shared or VPS hosting charge on monthly or yearly basis, but a cloud hosting offers hourly billing as well. The hour, during which you used maximum resources, you will have to pay extra amount for that hour only whereas for other normal usage, you have to pay the low amount. 

You can also increase your resources instantly without any delay and without any downtime. This feature is useful for big ecommerce sites who can’t allow a single second of downtime as they could lose a lot of customers if their website is down for few minutes only.

But still cloud hosting server is vulnerable and there could be a down time. Though it would rarely happen but still there are chances. In any case, the uptime and the response time of a cloud hosting is better than the others.

A reseller hosting is not another type of hosting plan. It is just a facility for those who want to start their business of web development and they wanted to offer hosting space to their clients. In a reseller hosting, you can buy a lot of resources and then you can distribute those resources to your clients.

If you want to start your own hosting company, you can use the reseller hosting plan as well where you can get the reseller account in relatively low price but then you can share that hosting among different clients and can earn money out of it. You can get shared reseller hosting or a VPS reseller hosting plan as well.

If your website development gone through the Windows platform i.e. VB.net or ASP.net then you should use a Windows hosting which have special features to support the Microsoft products. Along with the programming language, that might be ASP.net, a windows hosting also support the SQL database server. Websites or other applications created using a .net framework will perform best on a special Windows hosting.

A Linux hosting is best suited for the websites which are developed using PHP script. A .net website will not run on a Linux hosting whereas a PHP website will not run on a Windows hosting. So you must be very careful while choosing your hosting plan. You should be aware about the platform that you need.

There are different PHP scripts which are called Content management system. WordPress, Joomla, Magento are few examples. A Linux web hosting server will support all these CMS scripts. You can run any script on a Linux based hosting server. Moreover, for improved performance, you can select specially designed servers for each script. Like WordPress hosting is quite famous these days as most of the websites are developed using WordPress CMS. You can also get Joomla or Magento specialized hosting server.

WordPress Hosting offers special features for hosting WordPress site. Therefore, you will notice that you spend less time configuring and managing your WordPress installation that other hosting services which offer extra application (WordPress, Joomla,...) features. Moreover, the best WordPress hosting offers servers optimized for WordPress development, fast load time, security features that work specifically with WordPress, and WordPress updates.  If you have websites created with WordPress, this hosting service is very useful for your businesses.

Hope this article helps you to understand clearly about web hosting types. Now, you can figure out what type of web hosting plan you need.  To give you more idea, you should choose any type of web hosting as your business needs. Most web hosting companies offer many types of web hosting plans and flexible hosting migration option. You even start with a shared hosting plan as a basic web hosting plan; you always can migrate to a higher plan. In other word, you always can migrate to a higher or lower plan as your requirement.