Types of Hosting:-
i. Shared Hosting: It is the type of normal web hosting you know. When you go for hosting a web hosting account is setup for you so when you login you get access to your account. All web hosting you know are shared hosting. With the shared hosting account there are certain disadvantages so the activities of one person may affect everybody. If one person is spamming and google blacklist the I.P address it affects everyone that is using the shared hosting.
When someone's website is consuming too much traffic it can affect other websites that are using the same server. So the type of hosting you will need will depend on the type of traffic that your website will get. Also when an I.P address is blocked it means that it is on security alert and so they can block certain services online.
If you have a lot of traffic your website will be valued high and you will need a better hosting. Hosting is like a building space and you will need the type of hosting that can withstand the massive traffic coming to your website. If you see even 1000 visits to your website you will nee another type of hosting called dedicated hosting.
Definition of Shared Hosting: Shared hosting is the type of hosting that stores about 100's of websites on the same hosting server.
ii. Dedicated Hosting: With the dedicated hosting what happens is that because of the kind of traffic the webserver is hosting you buy or rent the whole webserver to you alone and it's expensive . So if the webserver is in U.S or Canada you buy the whole webserver and manage it where you are.
And you can host as many websites you want. Some people have dedicated hosting servers and share it with others. A company like Mtn would not want to share with others so they will buy their own server.
Definition of Dedicated Hosting: It is the type of webhosting that dedicates an entire webserver to a single website or owner.
iii. V.P.S (Virtual Private Server) Hosting: In webhosting there is something called web partitioning if someone comes and buy webhosting they get a partition of the server. Webserver partition is such that you can turn of your partition and other partitions will be runnning and that is what you call a V.P.S.
With V.P.S hosting a server can be partitioned into several parts and when you purchase a V.P.S you get one partition and use it as you see fit and it is also a dedicated server.
A V.P.S hosting is type of dedicated hosting but with this kind the webserver has been divided into several partition and each V.P.S account controls a single partition of the server.
iv. Clustered Hosting: This is a tye of hosting that has multiple web servers hosting the same website or mirror of the website.
It usually works with a load balancer.
v. Reseller Hosting: This is a type of hosting service that is used to host other websites. If you have a reseller hosting account you can create other hosting account for other companies and other people. If you own a reseller hosting account you create a hosting account for others. There is not even one hosting company on Ghana. There is something you call data centers so big hosting companies own data centers and that is where when people search for websites it comes to the data centers to look for where the websites is hosted. What web hosting companies do is to own reseller hosting accounts. You don't buy hosting but you have a reseller hosting account and sell hosting to others.