Websites are hosted on servers. In simple terms, a server is a very powerful computer that does only one or two simple services, hence the name server. The type of server we’re interested in stores websites and delivers them to people over the internet. Your web host provides the server space and the technology for your website to be accessed on the Internet. It’s the process that allows someone to search for your site or enter your URL into their web browser to see your page online.

Everything that your website contains is stored and accessed through the web host. I’m referring to things like images, videos, files, text — everything.

Web hosting and data centers are often confused with one another. While the two are similar and work together, they are not quite the same. Web hosting refers to the servers that host websites or the hosting companies that provide you with server space. Data centers are the physical facilities where those servers are located.

There is no one-size-fits-all plan for web hosting. It’s like buying a car. You don’t just walk into a dealership and say, “I’ll have a car please.”

What kind do you want? You need to decide if you want a sports car, sedan, coupe, hybrid, SUV, electric, diesel, automatic transmission, manual transmission, etc.

Fortunately with web hosting, you don’t have that many options to choose from. There are four main types of hosting.

1. Shared

2. VPS

3. Dedicated

4. Cloud

I’ll explain how each one of these works and what type of website would need that level of hosting, so you can decide which option is best for you.

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VPS hosting is the next step up from shared hosting. With this option, one server is basically split into multiple virtual servers. The main server is shared with other websites, but each site is given its own virtual server. Since fewer websites share the main server, page load times will be much faster with VPS hosting. Since fewer websites share the main server, page load times will be much faster with VPS hosting.

It’s definitely important for you to understand the principles that boost your website loading time since this will ultimately have an impact on your conversions.

It’s not quite as good as dedicated hosting, but it’s better than shared hosting and gives you, the website owner, more control. If you go with this option, you’ll have complete root access and more control at the server level. But if you’re expecting high volumes of traffic, VPS hosting can still be limiting.

I’d compare it to using a car-sharing service: it’s faster than taking the bus, but you’re still limited in some ways.

Even small websites with lower volumes of traffic can benefit form VPS hosting. If your site has lots of visual elements like images and videos that could potentially slow down the loading time, you’ll be better off with VPS hosting than a shared host.