A Host of Options
Keeping your website online can cost anywhere from $4 to more than $1,000 a month. So which plan is right for your company?
Jameson Simpson
THE SOLUTION: With grid hosting, websites are supported by hundreds of connected servers that work like backup generators. When one site's traffic surges, the server clusters kick in with extra resources to keep the website running.
Shared server
Your website shares a Web server with other customers. If your site experiences heavy traffic, or if one of the other sites on the server does, your website could crash.
Major vendors: GoDaddy.com, 1&1 Internet, Yahoo Small Business, DreamHost
Price: From $4 to $25 a month
Grid server
Your website is hosted on a grid of servers. If your site experiences heavy traffic, other servers will pick up the load.
Major vendors: Media Temple, Mosso, 3Tera, Layered Technologies
Price: From $20 a month, with some services charging extra for resources used during traffic spikes
Virtual private server
Your website uses a large slice of a dedicated server. If other sites on the server max out, your site should run normally.
Major vendors: Spry VPS Hosting, Verio, Media Temple, Web.com, GoDaddy.com
Price: From about $35 a month
Dedicated server
Your website is hosted on its own server. This option offers the most capacity for a fixed price, but a sudden flood of millions of visitors could still overwhelm the server.
Major vendors: Rackspace, The Planet.com, SoftLayer, FastServers.net
Price: From $75 to $1,000 or more per server per month, depending on the capacity required. Some providers also charge setup fees.
