Web hosting is all about managing your web site and keeping it online for your visitors to access. Your web host service provider makes your web site available for people to see. Web hosting has been divided into four basic parts. They can be known according to their prices and other differentiating factors as we will be discussing below.

The first we have is the free hosting, we also have shared hosting / Virtual hosting, Virtual Private Server Hosting and the last is Dedicated hosting.

Free Hosting

You should know that there are places where you can get free hosting for your web site or your blog. Free web hosting has improved in performance over the last couple of years but the services which they provide are a little poor and can not be trusted. You should know that with free web hosting, you can not get the actual speed you are looking for, however, if you are not really into speed then you can get free web hosting online.

Shared Hosting / Virtual Hosting

The Shared or the virtual web hosting is web hosting service whereby you can buy, and after buying you can add a number of accounts sharing resources on a single web server. With this service you are able to get into the web service through the control panel but using this you would have only a little storage capacity and also limited bandwidth, you would also pay monthly or even yearly depending on the web host service provider.

This shared hosting is favorable for businesses that do not have enough cash. This would be a private business or a medium scale business, using the shared hosting; you do not require enough resources. The performance of the web host may be poor because they manage a lot of accounts. Also, the shared web hosting service may be a little inactive if you are trying to have a huge number of visitors to you site or if you are trying to have some multimedia components. If you know that you do not have enough resources then you can start with the shared hosting and then upgrade if you have enough resources. The amount you need to pay monthly for the shared web hosting is not much; it's just about $5-$15 monthly. The major advantage of the shared web hosting is that it is very cheap to get and also easy to access. However, the disadvantage is that the performance can be very poor and it also comes with limited features.

Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS)

The virtual private server hosting is almost like the shared hosting, however, it has lesser accounts and also the owners of each account can have their own virtual space on the server operating system. The VPS has partition software that optimizes the server and its resources for the available number of accounts. The Virtual Private Server would be very useful to you if you have technical skill on it. For you to get a nice service, you have to pay about $50 monthly. The advantage of this is that you can have control over the server if you have the skill. The disadvantage is that it is more expensive than the shared hosting and also requires technical knowledge.

Dedicated Hosting

With this type of service you have almost full control on the server because you are the only customer. With this type, you can have media sharing, having large number of visitors to your web page and so many other things. This may be very expensive but you will get the service of what you pay for. The dedicated hosting can go for as much as $150. The advantage of this is that you have the best performance and it is also very reliable. The major disadvantage is that it is very expensive and you will need some really technical knowledge for you to manage it properly.

In conclusion, you have to pick the package that will favor you both technically and also financially. But for you to get the best in the service you have paid for, the dedicated hosting package will do you a lot of good in this regard.