High Traffic

Web hosting service can be roughly categorized as follows:

• “shared” hosting
• “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting
• “dedicated server” hosting

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is typically the lowest tier offering by web hosting providers but still provides sufficient capacity to deal with the load from low-traffic websites. Shared hosting is just that “shared”; one physical server handles dozens or more websites simultaneously. If the web hosting provider doesn’t overload the server with too many websites, shared hosting can provide good service. Unfortunately, many web hosting providers pack as many websites as possible on individual servers to maximize profit at the expense of performance.

Virtual Private Server Hosting

A Virtual Private Server (or VPS) is generally the next step up in performance. A VPS is a “virtual machine” that runs on a single physical server; generally, multiple VPSes run on a single physical server. The advantage of a VPS is that, to the end-user, it is indistinguishable from a physical server. This allows for far greater flexibility in server configuration and, assuming the web hosting provider hasn’t over-provisional the physical server, better performance.

Dedicated Server

The ultimate in hosting is the Dedicated Server. Here, the customer gets an entire physical server dedicated to their web hosting needs. For sites that need to handle continuous and high loads (Cardinal Acres Web Development has a client that easily serves several thousand visitors per day). Dedicated Servers also offer complete customization.

Cardinal Acres Web Development can assist you in selecting both the proper type of web hosting plan for your site’s expected load along with a web hosting provider to provide quality hosting services.