Starting your online website is an exciting prospect, but have you thought about which hosting plan will be right for you?

When looking at the many thousands of web hosting services and packages available on the internet, there are generally 3 plans which are offered for you to choose from:

• Shared Hosting Plan Service
• VPS Hosting Plan
• Dedicated Server

Shared Hosting Plans

These are the more affordable and low budget friendly hosting packages which provide sufficient space to host a website, but not much else. As these plans are low budget, you won’t receive much in the way of administration of the account or be able to setup multiple domains or email accounts.

The other drawback with shared hosting plans is that it is unlikely you will be able to run database driven applications – examples of which are web stores, forums, and websites offering memberships etc.

Shared hosting plans are fantastic for personal websites or perhaps those which will not attract a huge amount of visitors – but if you are serious about your business, then it is definitely recommended to upgrade to either a VPS or Dedicated service.

VPS Hosting

A fantastic step up from shared hosting, these packages offer much more flexibility and performance, including:

• The choice of a windows VPS, or Linux VPS Hosting. Linux is a faster and cheaper alternative to windows, and is the most popular package.
• A faster and better performing service. The amount of users to each server is much lower compared to shared hosting, meaning the service shouldn’t be as slow. You will also be allocated dedicated memory, and in some cases a dedicated CPU. These both help speed up the loading times of your website.
• The ability to run several different websites under the single account, usually in the form of “add on” domains.
• Full management of your emails, usually with unlimited email accounts being available.
• MySQL – Use web applications which require a database to operate and store information.
• Generally, you will have much more disk space available to store more files, images and other miscellaneous web content.
• View server logs and statistics, such as site errors, server downtime, how much disk space you have utilised, and how much bandwidth has been used.
• Execute cron jobs to run at specific times. For example, you can run a cron job to refresh your database and update stock inventory from a supplier every day at 11pm.
• Full root access allowing you to make server adjustments and configurations without the necessity of requesting the hosting company to do them for you.

When looking at all these benefits, the increase in price between a shared hosting account and a Linux VPS hosting package isn’t that high, and should be something you might want to consider if you want to make sure your website offers a flawless experience for its users.

Dedicated Servers

Much like a VPS hosting plan, except you don’t share any the server with anyone else. These offer the most performance gains due to the amount of upgrades you can request, but the drawback of course will be the cost.

Which Server Type Should You Choose?

This is a difficult question to answer, as not everyone’s requirements are the same. If you are using your website for your business, it is recommended to consider a Linux VPS hosting plan for several reasons:

• Dedicated servers provide much more power but at a price, and most businesses will find a Linux VPS Hosting service will fulfil their requirements easily.
• When choosing between a Windows VPS and a Linux VPS, there will be a difference of price. Unfortunately, hosting companies pass on the cost of Windows Licensing to its customers, and this usually means a higher rate for the same server as one equipped with Linux.
• Linux is much faster than windows when in use, so your server will actually be quicker.

How To Find The Best Linux VPS Hosting Deals

Now you know about the different types of servers, and perhaps you have made up your mind and are ready to order your Linux VPS hosting account, but how do you find the best deal? There are thousands of companies to choose from, all with different prices and offers; it is no wonder many people become confused!

The first thing you should do is look for reviews and recommendations of the different companies, and see which offer a professional service with support. The best place to find these will be from review comparison websites, and even forums with dedicated web hosting sections.

The other way of looking for the best deal is to speak to other website owners and see who they have used to host their sites, and their experience with them. If someone else did the research beforehand, it could save you the time.

Lastly, you could simply search online and compare the services offered by Linux VPS hosting companies. The downside to this, is it will be difficult to ascertain whether any of them offer a reliable service, so when you have found a few, try and then find out more information on them.