Which web hosting solution will be most optimal for me?

There are different types of web hosting accounts appropriate for different web sites when it comes to the resources or the web hosting platform they require. To select the most relevant hosting service for your online portal, you need to judge what server-side software applications it needs, how many daily hits you anticipate at the start and in the long run, as well as any other special needs that may need to be covered.

Shared Website Hosting - Positive Sides

The most optimal option for small scale online portals with several hundred or a few, each client pays only for their account, which minimizes the overall price per individual significantly. There are various web hosting accounts varying from one web hosting company to another, providing different amounts of web space and bandwidth, different e-mailbox account quotas and so on. The positive point is that you can obtain a plan that will have the features your web page indeed demands. You will not have to pay a lot of cash for a package you will not utilize, or wind up with a small scale package that cannot host the web page. At NTC Hosting, there is a huge selection of shared hosting solutions appropriate for personal or small business sites that even come with pre-installed script-based systems like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal or WordPress - to render things easier. If you start with a low priced package and you need more functionalities, moving to a more advanced plan requires only a mouse click.

Shared Web Site Hosting - Disadvantages

A weakness of the shared hosting environment is that the web servers have some software applications installed on them and you cannot activate additional software applications. Given online portals, mainly web stores, require software applications to be available on the web server for them to work, and with a shared website hosting environment, you can install only software platforms that do not request full server root access.

Private Virtual Web Hosting Servers and Dedicated Web Hosting Servers

For online portals that require full root-level access, or if your site has many thousands or even 1 000 000's of visits per day, what you need is a VPS or a dedicated server. A virtual private web hosting server is a software simulation of a dedicated web hosting server and it performs in an exactly identical manner.

Virtual Web Servers

Both platforms traditionally include full server root privileges and can be restarted through a software program by the user, autonomously from the web hosting supplier. Just like the shared web page hosting accounts, the VPS hosting and the dedicated server hosting accounts have different features depending on what the hosting vendor offers. A virtual web hosting server plan contains guaranteed server space, RAM and CPU usage quotas that can sometimes be increased for short periods of time in case there are available resources on the physical server. With a dedicated web hosting server, the only limiting factor is the hardware it is utilizing, and it can be revamped by altering or appending components. A private virtual web hosting server is simpler to handle as it offers a virtualization panel, which can be utilized to restart it, to install applications, explore statistics, etc. The administration of a dedicated hosting server is more elaborate, so such an account would rather be used by skilled clients.

Dedicated Servers

Still, some web hosting firms provide managed dedicated hosting services where they carry out web hosting server administration operations instead of the customer. This can be a part of package or an additional option.

Before You Reach a Decision...

Opting for the top hosting package is important as it can have an influence on the stable performance of a site. Before opting for an account, compare the pros and cons, examine completely all the prerequisites for the site to run properly, particularly if it is script-driven, and, last but not least, if you have already chosen a hosting provider, the best thing to do would be to ask their customer support staff for advice as to which package exactly would be best for the stable functioning of your online portal.