What are the Different Types of Web Hosting and Their Cost?

Setting up a website will force you to think about the hosting issue. For many of us, this means asking ourselves: what is hosting and what options are available to me? To learn more, keep reading! 

A brief presentation of web hosting

In a nutshell, web hosting consists of making a website accessible to web users at all times, through the use of a server. As owners of the server(s), the company with whom you do business will become your website's host. 

The data that makes up a web site's code (including HTML and CSS) will be gathered on several files and placed on a server, which is administered by the host. This data, which is found on the server, is then translated by your navigator to ensure that the website will display all of the components that you see. Note that complementary services can be offered by the web host, such as antivirus protection for your website, or a backup service. 

Far from being offered under one single formula, web hosting takes several forms that each have their strengths and weaknesses. In one case or the other, the servers will need to benefit from effective bandwidth management (at least 100 Mbps, which means that the download speed will be of approximately 100 megabytes per second). 

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The different types of web hosting services and their prices

Shared hosting

Shared hosting consists of allowing several sites (up to thousands) to share the resources of one server. Since the server is busy with a large number of sites, the fees pertaining to this option will be considerably lower and should be somewhere between $5 and $10 per month. 

Although this choice may be economically advantageous, it comes with an irritating side-effect. Indeed, if one of the websites is very busy, it will take over a large part of the server's memory and in turn, other websites will suffer from slower download speeds. 

However, if the download speed is not an important factor in your case, shared hosting can be a good idea. This is mostly recommended for sites that are under development, sites that have uncomplicated configurations and sites that see low to average levels of traffic. 

VPS hosting

VPS hosting, for its part, works nearly in the same way as shared hosting. The main difference is that the server is only shared with 20 websites, which is a lot less than the previous option. 

Secondly, this type of hosting avoids the inconvenience of seeing the download speed of your website slow down due to another site receiving a lot of visitors, as the other sites sharing the server each have the same amount of memory available.

With regards to the configuration of a website, the possibilities are also much broader with VPS hosting, which is a sizeable advantage. The price of VPS hosting tends to vary between $80 and $450 a month.

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting consists in hosting one website per server, which is mostly used for sites that experience heavy traffic (several tens of thousands of visitors per month) as well as those for whom information confidentiality is vital. Furthermore, large companies prefer this type of hosting as it offers high-level protection against cyber-attacks. In terms of price, dedicated hosting costs approximately $125 per month. 

Even though dedicated hosting seems better than VPS hosting, it is important to know that the best version of the former can surpass the performance of dedicated hosting, providing that you are able to accept the higher price tag. 

Free web hosting: what is it?

As the name implies, free hosting consists of benefiting from free space on a server. Of course, the company that provides space to host your website will still want to make money with this service by putting ads on your website. However, note that this solution is best for a single page instead of a website.

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How to define your needs in terms of web hosting

Before settling on a choice for web hosting, it is important to think about several elements such as: 

• your monthly budget;
• the amount of traffic on your website;
• the times of day where the traffic is busiest;
• your needs in terms of technical support;
• your needs in terms of data confidentiality.

Recap table of the prices of web hosting

Type of web hosting

Average price

Shared hosting

$5 to $10 per month

VPS hosting

$80 to $450 per month

Dedicated hosting

Approximately $125 per month