There are different types of web hosting available in the internet now a days. Choosing a suitable web hosting provider depends on what kind of website you need: blog, hobby, corporate portal or e-commerce site. Most common types of web hosting are: free, shared and dedicated hosting. In free web hosting service, for example, they host place their own ads on the user's web pages which can be annoying for any visitor of the site. The other plans offer tools, support, various features and bandwidth but charge monthly fees.
Free Web Hosting
Free hosting is the most basic web hosting service. Banners ads are very common on free website hosting services. There are a few free web hosting providers today which provide excellent options but that is the exception to the rule. Most free plans do not provide users with databases, multiple e-mail accounts, or the ability to run any scripting language. The type of domain one receives in this free form of service is typically a free sub-domain (yoursite.webhost.com) or a directory (www.webhost.com/~yoursite) which is difficult to remember and not good for branding and marketing. For professional web sites, my recommendation is to avoid free web hosting services. Put a small investment for cheap web hosting instead to run your own site, which in the long run will make you happier and more satisfied.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular basic type of web hosting. In many cases, it permits one or more than one site to be hosted on the same server. In shared hosting, web hosts provide system administration and the server maintenance. Main benefits of shared web hosting are scripting features which allow using different types of files written in different programming language and platforms such as CGI, ASP, PHP, Perl, Javascript etc. There are also database support such as MySQL, SQL server etc. Shared hosting plans also offer large bandwidth, and multiple e-mail address capability along with own top level domain name. For a hosting company, shared hosting is a very good choice to offer affordable products and services to their clients while having more users on single server and thus having less overhead costs. Therefore, cheap web hosting services offer shared type of hosting.
Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated web hosting is very good option for someone who wants more storage, bandwidth and control over the hosting server. The advantages of having dedicated web hosting over shared web hosting are mainly having more space, unlimited databases and email addresses as well as unlimited bandwidth. There are two types of dedicated web hosting plans: managed web hosting and unmanaged web hosting. Managed hosting is controlled by the hosting company. In the unmanaged form, the user is the server administrator, which permit the user to have maximum control and flexibility but it require the user to be an expert web server administrator. Therefore, unmanaged hosting is a bit complicated and requires more user expertise. Therefore, managed web hosting is more popular than the unmanaged dedicated hosting plans, but still dedicated web hosting is far better in terms of the features, support, reliability, and control.
