Web hosting allows an individual or organization to establish an online presence on the Internet through servers. Every site which can be accessed on the Internet operates on some kind of a server and today you will come across companies which offer different types of hosting. For instance, you can get free hosting services ideally suited for individuals with a limited demand for server space or paid hosting services which are costlier and suited for businesses needing dedicated servers. The primary functions of a web hosting service provider is to offer unlimited server space and bandwidth, web services and web server maintenance services to sites which are hosted either by organizations of individuals. Although you may be able to host your own individual site from a personal computer at home, it is advisable to select a quality web hosting service to ensure a strong online presence.

Types of web hosting services: Today, you can choose from a variety of web hosting services like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting or cloud hosting.

Shared Hosting: This offers many users with data storage facilities on a single server. This kind of hosting is consequently very economical because the server’s resources are shared amongst multiple users. So, resources like disk space, bandwidth, processing power and memory are all shared by different websites on a single server. Most businesses which have to run on limited funds prefer to choose shared hosting. Although there are concerns about the amount of disk space and bandwidth or uptime which a site may enjoy, most of these concerns can be addressed when you are able to choose a quality and reputed shared hosting service from cheap web hosting providers.

Dedicated Hosting: In dedicated hosting, a site enjoys exclusive access to a single server. This is particularly useful for businesses that need unlimited disk space, high uptime, unlimited bandwidth and reliability. Here, your website does not have to share the server’s resources with any other user. It is placed on the hosting provider’s data center and is maintained by the hosting company. This type of hosting is ideally suited for ecommerce sites which typically get a huge volume of traffic.

VPS hosting: This kind of hosting falls between shared and dedicated hosting services. When you need hosting services that are stronger than shared hosting, you can opt for VPS hosting which has a server split into multiple “virtual” servers. This offers users easy root access to the server and is almost as popular as shared hosting. VPS is basically dedicated to a user’s hosting needs, enjoying the privacy of a physical computer and which can be configured to operate the server software.

Cloud Hosting: This kind of hosting service is comparatively the most recent and here you can use resources as services and therefore make payments for only the services you use. This makes it very simple to upgrade the server and cloud hosting therefore enjoys the flexibility and strength of dedicated hosting. The greatest advantage of cloud hosting services is that the users will not have to anticipate traffic or the amount of resources it will need, instead, they can promote a website aggressively.

To choose web hosting services, you need to first understand what your hosting requirements are and then browse through the hosting plans and features offered by multiple quality hosting service providers. You can also check online reviews about different types of web hosting services before making a choice.