Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the most popular hosting options for beginners and owners of small-to-mid websites due to its affordable pricing and user friendliness. As the name implies, your websites are hosted on a server that also hosts other sites. We call sites hosted on the same servers “neighbors”. Your sites will be sharing server resources and IP address (generally speaking) with their neighbors.
VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting is also known as Virtual Dedicated Hosting. This hosting option is one step above shared hosting but one step below dedicated hosting. From the outside, VPS works just like shared hosting – a large server is divided into smaller pieces and distributed to different users. But from the inside, everything is different – VPS hosting users will have full access to the server root (this means better server controls and security) and better hosting quality (as VPS is normally shared by less number of users).
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated Hosting offers maximum control and server power as the users own the entire server – the server is yours and yours alone. There are generally two options when it comes to dedicate hosting – managed dedicated hosting and unmanaged dedicated hosting. For managed dedicated hosting, the hosting companies will help manage the servers on behalf of their users; managed dedicated hosting, on the other hand, requires the users to configure and manage everything by themselves.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud Hosting is “hosting on demand” – you only pay for the hosting resources you need (or use). It’s a type of web hosting that spreads the load of hosting across multiple physical servers. Cloud hosting eliminates single point of failure (as there are always another server ready to backup the failed ones) and it’s very suitable for websites that have a lot of traffics on certain days but low traffics on the other.
Further reading:
50 must know terms in web hosting –
http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-hosting-guides/web-hosting-glossary/
WHSR hosting reviews – http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/
Infographic by +InMotion Hosting – Where Does Your Website Live?
URL: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/blog/where-does-your-website-live-infographic/