Do you have a personal project that you want to share with the world? If that is the case, in order for your creation to go live, you will need to invest in a hosting service.
While there are many different options that you can choose from, differing in terms of resources, operating systems and additional features, we are going to cover some of the most important ones when it comes to choosing a hosting option for your project.
Before you can decide on a hosting option, however, you will need to answer some basic questions about your project in order to make it easier when it comes to making a selection.
What is your project’s intention?
Let’s start from the most important question – what is your project about? Answering this question will save you a lot of time, effort and unexpected headaches later down the line so make sure to get it right.
Is your project informational? Do you have a website or application that you have made purely to provide information to others? Examples of such projects include blogs, wikis and tutorials.
Is your project interactive? Do you expect to have visitors that will need to create accounts or interact with your project in different ways such as subscribing to a newsletter or sending emails? Will your project feature different interactive elements such as backgrounds, buttons and additional visuals?
Will your project offer goods or services? This is a very important step to consider because such projects become a lot more complex in nature and they continue to expand over time, meaning that you will need to invest more in the beginning when it comes to hosting so that you can be sure that everything will be running smoothly upon launching your project. Examples of such projects include online ecommerce stores and service providers.
Hosting options for each type of project
If you have a small, informational website that you wish to upload to the Internet then you should consider getting a shared hosting plan. This is the cheapest option on the market as you will need to share resources with other users, although this wouldn’t be a problem if your project is not that big in scale and does not have that many interactive features, elements and functionalities.
This is the perfect option for websites that will present a lot of static content at large intervals of time.
If you are going to be setting up an online store or if your website will be incorporating many interactive elements and features, then you should consider investing in either a virtual private server, a virtual dedicated server or in a dedicated instance. The first two options are both cloud-based, allowing you to have a lot more versatility and server resources in comparison to shared hosting plans.
Bare metal dedicated instances are quite powerful but also cost substantial amounts of money, which is why our recommendation would be to opt for either a VPS or a VDS server, due to the fact that they can offer many different features and are also easily scalable, allowing you to expand or downgrade without having to change your hosting plan.
Additionally, VPS servers can also come equipped with the Windows Server operating system and remote desktop access, which is quite beneficial for users who don’t have prior experience in managing servers. This is because traditionally hosting utilizes Linux-based operating systems such as CentOS & Ubuntu, which can be quite difficult to operate for newer users. This is where the Windows alternative becomes quite beneficial, due to it having an intuitive user interface.
It is important to mention that Windows Server does require a license, which can be bought from the official website or through your selected hosting provider with an increasing number of companies including it directly in the price of the service.
Which hosting option should you choose?
Overall, if you are going to be running a small informative project, consider going for shared hosting and grabbing cPanel or any other type of hosting panel to make managing your server and content easier, while also spending less in the process.
If you are going to be running a website with many interactive features or products, then you should probably go for either a VPS or a VDS server, depending on whether you would like to have dedicated CPU cores for an increased performance.
There are also Windows VPS servers which are a great option for those who do not have any prior experience when it comes to hosting or managing a server. In addition to that, there are hosting providers that even accept alternative payment methods, allowing for much cheaper international transactions. Cloud servers are also scalable, which can help you manage traffic fluctuations easier, which can be especially helpful for seasonal businesses.