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While there are many specific types of
web hosting, all hosting solutions fit into one of these three
technical categories:
- 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. |