Hosting plans are sold under four main labels. Each one describes how a physical server is divided up, and who looks after your part of it. Once you know that, most hosting pages become easy to read.
| Type | What you get | Who runs the server | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | An account on a server used by hundreds of sites | The host | Small sites, blogs, brochure sites |
| VPS | A virtual machine with a fixed share of CPU, memory and disk | You, unless sold as managed | Growing sites, several sites, custom software |
| Dedicated | A whole physical machine | You, unless sold as managed | Steady heavy workloads, strict isolation |
| Cloud | Virtual machines billed by usage, resized on demand | You | Traffic that changes a lot, multi-server setups |
Shared hosting
Your site lives in one account on a server alongside many others, all sharing its processors, memory and disk. The host handles updates, security and backups, and you usually get a control panel such as cPanel. You cannot install system software or change server settings.
The trade-off is neighbours. When another site on the server gets busy, yours can slow down. Hosts cap each account to keep things fair, and those caps, not the advertised disk space, are usually what a growing site hits first.
VPS (virtual private server)
A physical server is split into virtual machines, each with its own guaranteed slice of resources and its own operating system. You get root access, any software and any configuration. With that comes the job of running it: security updates, the firewall, backups and fixing what breaks. A managed VPS hands that work back to the host. See managed or unmanaged.
Dedicated server
The whole machine is yours. No one else shares the hardware, so performance is predictable. It costs more, and replacing failed hardware takes longer than moving a virtual machine. It makes sense when you need a full machine’s power all the time, or rules require physical separation.
Cloud hosting
Cloud is less a type of server than a way of renting them. You create virtual machines, storage and databases on demand, change their size in minutes, and pay for what you use. That suits traffic that rises and falls. The catch is that costs are harder to predict, and bandwidth is often billed separately.
Reading a plan
- “Unlimited” always has a limit. Look in the terms for CPU, memory, file count (inodes) or “fair use” limits.
- Compare resources, not plan names. Compare vCPUs, guaranteed memory, storage type (NVMe, SSD or HDD) and bandwidth.
- Check the renewal price. First-term discounts are common.
- Ask where backups are stored and how you restore them. A backup on the same server is not much of a backup.
- Know how you would leave. If you can download your files and database at any time, you can always move.
Something out of date? Software changes. If a step no longer works, tell us and we will check it and update the page.
