What Sort of Hosting Should I Choose for My Website?

Having a website is a bit like having a child. It's rewarding to watch them grow, but they require time, effort, and a watchful eye. Providing an environment that meets their needs will ensure their healthy, ongoing growth.

A website can grow in terms of content, structure and functionality, and these have implications for your site's home—your web hosting. Invest some time considering the options.

In this article we’ll help you choose the appropriate type of web hosting by listing some key decisions about your website and the amount of assistance you’ll need setting it up and maintaining it.

If you missed our first article, I Need a Website. What Do I Need to Know About Hosting?, you might want to check it out before reading this one.

What Types of Web Hosting Are There?

One thing that complicates the choice of web hosting is the overwhelming number of options out there! Here’s a quick rundown.

The most affordable hosting plans are shared hosting. They cost less because you share a server with others. You split the cost, but you also split the storage and bandwidth. If another site gets a lot of traffic, yours might suffer.

A dedicated server’s resources are completely available to your website. You get all of the storage and bandwidth, and you may be responsible for the management of the computer as well.

Cloud hosting is a cluster of maintained servers that scale when necessary to give your website even more resources than a dedicated server.

In each case you’re typically offered a choice of plans with different options at different price points. These vary from provider to provider.

So, which type of hosting is best for your site? Answer the following questions to find out.

1. How Many Pages Will Your Site Have?

You might be surprised by how little space a basic website needs. You might also be surprised by how fast a website can grow. So choose a hosting plan that provides enough room to store your website now, with plenty of room to grow in the future.

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by Adrian Try via SitePoint