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?

Mar 1, 2008

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.