Hosting types, and how to choose which to use
Why does hosting type matter?
Developing a robust and performant application is essential to be competitive in the modern web ecosystem but sometimes that alone is not enough. Even if your application is efficient and offers a great user experience in offline testing and through its design concepts, a slow or badly managed hosting service can potentially nullify all that hard work.
Bad Neighbour Effect

The Bad Neighbour Effect is a phenomenon which refers to how other sites or responsibilities of your server could negatively affect the performance or security of your site.
It is common for sudden influxes of traffic to a web site to occur intermittently due to the time of day or function of the website. Consider for example an e-commerce site during Christmas season. In these cases the site experiencing higher traffic will steal resources from all the other sites which share its server.
It also possible for security to be compromised on shared servers with malware, viruses or hacks when the server isn’t configured in a secure way. And often this isn’t something that is up to the client to configure.
Speed
This is immediately apparent when looking at slow loading times and their effect on the profitability, lead conversions and other business metrics for web services. A marketing firm, Aberdeen Group did a study on such metrics that showed just how impatient people are. The study found that a one second delay in response time caused a 7% decrease in conversions, Increasing page response time from 2 seconds to 8 seconds increases page abandonment by 33% and, a 2 second slowdown reduced satisfaction by 3.8% and revenue/user by 4.3%.

If this isn't enough consider that Amazon released a study which shows that a 100ms increase in load time led to 1% decrease in their revenue, $1.6 billion (£1.24 billion) per year loss.

The Different types of hosting available
Broadly speaking there are four different types of hosting available
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the use of a single server for multiple sites. As you can imagine, it can vary greatly on just how many sites share space. Many factors from server hardware to complexity of web apps can come into play.
- Price: It is usually the cheapest option available, often even free.
- Bad Neighbour Effect: Has considerable issues, from speed and reliability losses to security exploits.
- Flexibility: Not flexible at all, no choice to customize the setup or security options.
- Speed: The slowest option available due to shared resources.
- Scalability: It is relatively easy to add more resources as and when needed.
- Setup: Often there is no need to configure any backend or deal with server maintenance.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting

In the case of VPS servers there is still a single server but it is configured in such a way as to hold multiple virtual servers, each assigned to one site.
- Price: Still quite affordable.
- Bad Neighbour Effect: Greatly mitigated due to server virtual separation, but still open to some security issues.
- Flexibility: More flexibility to customize your environment and security.
- Speed: Usually more reliable than shared hosting as the virtual server reserves resources for your site.
- Scalability: It is relatively easy to add more resources as and when needed.
- Setup: Some setup and management responsibilities fall on you.
Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting uses single server but it is reserved entirely for a single site.
- Price: Expensive.
- Bad Neighbour Effect: No issues whatsoever as the server is completely separate from other sites.
- Flexibility: The most flexibility to customize the environment and security.
- Speed: Very good, as long as the hardware is up to the required standards.
- Scalability: Not very scalable at all and often having a single server could mean significant downtime if there are issues.
- Setup: Great setup and management responsibilities fall on you and significant time and resources are likely to go into server maintenance if not outsourced.
Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is similar to VPN hosting in that a virtual server is assigned to each site. However it makes use of an online infrastructure to share the resources of multiple physical server machines in a dynamic manner.
- Price: Variable according to usage. Could be good or bad as it is sometimes unpredictable.
- Bad Neighbour Effect: Usually minimal issues, depending on provider.
- Flexibility: Similar flexibility to VPS hosting.
- Speed: Very good, resources are enlisted dynamically as needed from multiple potential servers.
- Scalability: The most scalable. Adding more resources is quick and easy to do.
- Setup: Similar setup to VPS hosting.
Which type is best for you?
Shared Hosting is great for sites that don’t need a lot of resources and expect low traffic. It also the best option on a tight budget.
VPS Hosting is best for most situations and is still quite affordable at lower price plans.
Dedicated Hosting is very niche. It is only really necessary in situations where data protection is very important or hardware needs are specialised.
Cloud based hosting is essentially a better version of the VPS solution. It offers all the same benefits and adds more scalability and often at a better price.

