Top Hosting

There are different types of hosting services appropriate for different websites with regard to the resources or the hosting environment they need. To choose the most optimal hosting service for your website, you must reckon what server-side software applications it requires, how many visits per day you expect at the beginning and in the long run, as well as any other specific demands that may have to be met.

Shared web hosting - Good Points

The most adequate option for small scale web pages with a few hundred or a few thousand visitors is a shared hosting account. With this form of hosting, each customer pays only for their account, which diminishes the overall cost per individual critically. There are diverse web hosting plans varying from one web hosting corporation to another, providing different amounts of disk storage and monthly traffic, different e-mailbox account quotas and so on. The advantage is that you can buy a plan that will include the specs your online portal indeed needs. You will not need to pay a lot of cash for a plan you will not avail of, or end up with a small scale package that cannot accommodate the online portal. We, at Hosting Africa, offer a huge choice of hosting plans suitable for private or small business portals that even come with pre-activated script-driven systems like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal or WordPress - to make it simpler. If you start with a less powerful plan and you need more system resources, moving to a more powerful package involves only a click of the mouse.

Shared web hosting - Weaknesses

A weakness of the shared web hosting environment is that the web servers have some software platforms installed on them and you are unable to install additional software applications. Specific websites, chiefly web shops, request applications to be installed on the hosting server for them to operate, and with a shared hosting account, you can activate only software platforms that do not need full root access.

VPS Web Hosting Servers and Dedicated Web Servers

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

VPS Servers

Both solutions generally provide complete root-level access and can be rebooted through a software tool by the user, autonomously from the hosting company. Like the shared website hosting accounts, the VPS and the dedicated hosting packages sport different characteristics depending on what the web hosting vendor offers. A private virtual web server plan includes guaranteed disk storage space, RAM and CPU usage quotas that can at times be increased for short spells of time provided that there are spare resources on the physical server. With a dedicated web hosting server, the only limiting factor is the hardware configuration it is utilizing, and it can be upgraded by altering or adding components. A virtual private hosting server is simpler to run as it includes a virtualization tool, which can be used to restart it, to install applications, check stats, and so on. The administration of a dedicated web server is more intricate, so such an account would rather be resorted to by qualified customers.

Dedicated Hosting Servers

However, some hosting companies provide managed dedicated server web hosting solutions where they run dedicated web server administration tasks instead of the client. This can be included in the plan or an extra option.

Before You Reach a Decision...

Opting for the top hosting package is important as it can have an influence on the proper operation of a site. Before settling on a package, compare the pros and cons, inspect carefully all the requirements for the online portal to operate properly, especially if it is script-powered. And if you are still in doubt which one is the best hosting service for you, ask our live chat operators or give us a call - our sales reps will be happy to assist you and answer all your questions.