What types of web hosting are there?

Hosting a website basically means making it accessible to the world. You can host a website from your own home but it will be a pretty bad idea. First of all, you'll be inviting the entire world into your home router, which doesn't seem very safe. You'll also need to keep your PC on all the time, which won't be energy efficient. Then, if your website gets busy it's unlikely your hardware will be able to cope. The most sensible thing to do is outsource the task of hosting a site. This is where web hosts come in. They store your website on server and it's secure, always on, and has the most up to date hardware to ensure site performance when it's busy. You can share a server, rent your own resources, or even rent a space and put your own hardware in it. There are options for everything and based on your business requirements the right type of hosting will make a big difference to cost and performance. If you have a small site, shared hosting is fine. Anything else will be a waste of money. If you have a larger eCommerce store then a virtual private server is a better option. If your business is ultra sensitive to any downtime then cloud hosting is perfect as multiple copies of your site are stored in different locations so if a disaster occurs your site will always be online. Then, there are more specific options like the best WordPress hosting , or best Minecraft server . These hosting options have optimizations for these specific uses to give you the best performance and value for money.

What is shared hosting?

Shared hosting is a simple scheme where multiple websites are stored on the same web server (a type of computer). One benefit of shared hosting is its simplicity. You don't have to spend any time maintaining the server, because your provider does that. All you need to do is work on your own site. Sharing a web server means sharing the costs, too, and with sometimes hundreds of websites on the same server, that usually means rock-bottom prices. The big problem with shared hosting is you’re also sharing your server's system resources: CPU time, RAM, storage and network connection. There's only so much to go around, and the more sites on your server, the slower and less dependable your own website is likely to be. Shared hosting is still the best choice in many situations. If you're creating a simple blog, a site for family, a local club, or anything with very light traffic where no-one will care much if the site is a little slow occasionally, the shared option is ideal. It's very easy to use, and you can get decent plans from many providers for around $2 to $4 a month. But if this is something more important, a web store, maybe a business site, then a slow or unreliable website will drive visitors away. It’s well worth upgrading to something more powerful.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a clever technology that divides a single physical server into multiple server environments. Log onto a VPS and you'll have access to what looks like the full server. This is far more complex than shared hosting, but it also gives you much more control. You can install any apps, tweak any server settings, and even replace the entire operating system if you like. There will be other VPS environments on the same physical server (though not as many other accounts as with shared hosting), reducing your performance a little. But you'll have your own allocation of network bandwidth, RAM, storage, and CPU time. These won't be shared with other customers, which means your site should see higher and more consistent speeds than you'll get with shared hosting. Upgrading is often very easy, too. If website traffic grows and you need additional resources - more CPU time, extra RAM, a higher bandwidth allowance - then you can typically add them to your plan in a click or two, and they'll be available almost immediately. This extra power comes at a price, but it might be much less than you think. Hostinger's cheapest shared hosting plan is $1.99 a month on the four-year plan; its cheapest VPS plan is just $2.99, again over four years. It's a very basic plan, but at $8.99 for a one-off month, it's not expensive to see if a VPS could work for you.

What is dedicated hosting?

As the name suggests, dedicated hosting is a plan where a physical server is dedicated to a single client. That means no more speed issues because you're sharing bandwidth, RAM or CPU time with other accounts: the entire system is yours alone. As you're renting the entire physical server, most providers allow you to build it with whatever hardware you need. You can typically choose your CPU, storage drives and type (cheap and high capacity HDDs, smaller but faster SSDs), operating system, bandwidth allowance and more. This can be expensive. Even budget providers like Namecheap charge a monthly $50-$60 for their most basic dedicated servers, and Liquid Web's top-of-the-range enterprise models might cost $500 or more (although they're aimed at huge sites which might have a million page views a month). There's more work involved in managing a dedicated server, too. With shared hosting, if your server crashes, the provider support team should notice and fix or reboot it. But if you're running the server, all that is up to you, unless you pay even more to the provider to handle it for you. If you absolutely need top performance and complete control of your server, though, a dedicated plan is probably the way to go.

What is WordPress hosting?

WordPress is a website builder and content management system. It's free and you can install it manually on a VPS or higher spec hosting type or you can rent a VPS server or shared server with WordPress pre-installed. Over 40% of websites are built on top of WordPress so most shared hosting plans are pre-configured to be optimized to make the WordPress software run as fast and securely as possible. You should be able to make a VPS plan run WordPress as fast and securely too but you will need to know what you're doing to get the most out of it. The two main types of WordPress hosting are managed and unmanaged. With unmanaged hosting you're responsible for updates and security but with managed a lot of those responsibilities are passed to the hosting provider. It does cost more money but it can save you a lot of time.

Does server location matter?

Yes. You can host your website anywhere and still get fast loading times on the other side of the world by using a CDN but it's still best to host the actual site as close to your customers as possible. A CDN can speed up website access on pages that are frequently accessed but if your site is not in constant use in a region, you will see less benefit. Plus, a CDN is often an added cost. If you simply purchased a server close to your customers, you wouldn't need a CDN. If you have an audience in a specific region it's worth searching for the best web hosting services in that area. For example, the best UK web hosting .

What is managed hosting?

Shared hosting accounts are generally very simple to operate, but higher end products - WordPress, VPS hosting, dedicated servers - often require running all kinds of maintenance tasks. You might need to test and update WordPress plugins, install operating system patches, spot and troubleshoot server errors, maybe reboot a server if it locks up or crashes. Buy a managed web hosting plan and some or all of these tasks will be carried out by your hosting provider's regular support team. You'll potentially save real time and hassle, and if problems do crop up, they'll be speedily addressed by the people best qualified to fix them. Sounds great-- so why would anyone do anything else? Cost, mostly. Hostwinds' 4-core 8GB RAM VPS costs $59.99 fully managed, for instance, but only $38.99 for the unmanaged DIY version, a big drop in price. One key message here is to keep this in mind when comparing WordPress, VPS or dedicated plans between hosting providers. Host A may look seriously cheap, but are you comparing a managed with an unmanaged plan? Be sure to check the small print. There's no precise definition of 'managed', either, so don't simply assume a managed plan means you'll have absolutely no maintenance to do. Every provider has its own definition of what's covered and what isn't, so check it out, make sure you understand exactly what's covered before you buy.

What is email hosting?

One of the big advantages of registering a domain is you can have your own custom email address (Steve@thebestbuilder.com is far more impressive and business-like than builder457@gmail.com). You probably won't get email when you register a domain, for instance. Most hosting plans include some email support, but it may not be as powerful as you need, especially for business use. You'll often see strict limits on Inbox size, the number of accounts you can create, even the number of emails you can send a day. Email hosting is a service which allows you to send and receive emails via a custom domain. You don't have to buy email hosting from the same provider as your web hosting, and in fact you don't need web hosting at all: just register a domain, buy an email hosting plan and you're ready to start creating and using all those name@yoursite.com email accounts. Signing up for email hosting may get you a better service. The top providers give you plenty of Inbox space, support large attachments, don't hold you back with annoying usage limits and provide built-in spam, phishing and malware filters to keep you safe. This could be a feature well worth adding to your hosting line-up, and it's generally inexpensive; many email hosting plans cost around $1-$2.50 a month. But if you currently have a budget shared hosting plan, keep in mind that upgrading might get you better email features and a bunch of other goodies, too. Check your provider's hosting feature lists to find out exactly what you get.

What's the website hosting TLDR?

For WordPress, Shared/WordPress hosting is easy but slightly more expensive. Managed is slightly more on top of that but even easier. Using a VPS and a file transfer service to upload and install WordPress is the cheapest but more complex option. If you've got time and your website idea is not very complex (like a blog/ portfolio site) I'd but the effort into using a VPS and setting everything up yourself. If you don't get on with it you can always use a money-back guarantee and transfer to a managed WordPress option. For eCommerce, you want something flexible so you can scale your website for peak trading and promotional activities. You also want something with daily backups and redundancy so you never have any downtime. You'll also want something that focuses on website loading speed because the payoff for faster loading pages is worth it.

What else should I consider when picking a web host?

Three or four-year hosting plans can have appealingly low prices, but they don't always work out. If you're unhappy with a host, or your site grows and the old plan can't handle the increased traffic, you may have to buy something else early. It's safer to sign up for a year (or even less), at least initially, and perhaps choose a VPS or similar plan where it's easy to add more resources as required. Uptime (the percentage of the day that your website is available) is a key stat for any serious website. If a potential customer can't find or use your website, at best they'll think you're unprofessional, at worst they'll give up on you entirely and go elsewhere. Web hosting providers often quote uptime figures such as '99.9%', but these don't always cover the issues you might expect. Check the small print carefully for any hidden catches. Look for a Service Level Agreement (SLA), too, especially for dedicated and other high-end hosting plans. These go beyond vague website promises to guarantee uptime, support response times and other elements of the service, and describe the compensation you'll get if the target is missed.

Web hosting features explained

Domain name . It’s the address people type in their browsers to visit your website, like techradar.com. Many hosting plans include one domain name for free for the first year of registration. Choose a .com domain to establish your credibility or .online for an affordable alternative. SSL certificate . This feature encrypts the connection between your website and your visitors’ browsers, preventing hackers from accessing it. Hosting providers usually provide one for free from Let’s Encrypt . Some also offer a premium version as an add-on, which can provide a better warranty and level of verification. Unmetered bandwidth . This means the hosting provider won’t monitor or cap the amount of data transferred, so there’s no need to worry about extra bandwidth usage fees once the website’s traffic grows. Each company has a different policy on unmetered resources, so make sure to read their terms and conditions beforehand. SSD disk space . Compared to HDDs, SSDs are a much more reliable storage solution. They’re less prone to disk failures and can serve data twenty times faster, speeding up your website’s performance. cPanel . With this control panel, new users can manage their hosting via an intuitive interface – no technical skills required. You can access different features, check out your resource usage, and configure the domain’s settings within a few clicks. WordPress auto-installer . This feature lets you set up WordPress in a few clicks from the hosting’s control panel. That way, there’s no need to download and upload the CMS files yourself. Website migration . Most hosting providers allow transferring an existing site from another host to their servers. Typically, you have to insert some information about the website, submit a ticket to their customer support team, and wait a few hours for the migration to initiate. Custom HTML and CSS . The control panel should provide access to your website’s files, including HTML and CSS, via the file manager or an FTP client. Feel free to edit them to customize the site’s front end to your liking. LCP. This is the time it takes to display the content on the page. If when you click on a link and you start to get parts of the page through at different times then the LCP is low. You want the lowest time possible. Otherwise your users will have a bad experience and maybe leave you site.

Best web hosting: Tested by experts in real-world scenarios

Best web hosting: Tested by experts in real-world scenarios | TechRadar