In order to run a website, you require a hosting service. This service handles all traffic requests coming to and from your website and also stores the data. The two most common forms of hosting are VPS hosting and shared hosting. Each of these two hosting services has its strong and weak points, so you must be aware of your individual needs before choosing the most suitable web hosting service.

Shared web hosting is a popular form of budget web hosting. Here, your website gets hosted on one server with many other websites with whom you share the server. Shared hosting is an economical solution of hosting websites as multiple clients are able to share resources of one server. With shared hosting, all the sites share one server hostname, the same IP address, the same e-mail program and the same FTP services. Whenever a potential customer clicks on a link in the search engine, they get directed to the correct website by a software program that resides over the server. However, this form of hosting is not ideal for sites with high traffic, as it is not often possible to isolate each single website from other websites sharing the same server. Many people usually go for shared web hosting as it is affordable but there are some limitations and restrictions you may encounter while using shared hosting.

A Virtual Private Server Hosting also allows you to share one server with other sites. However, your partition on the server's disk is much bigger and this gives you a greater bandwidth. With this type of web hosting, you get your own e-mail service, and your own FTP service. VPS hosting allows you to be in control and you can choose how to run your server.

Below are other major differences between shared web hosting and VPS hosting:

Security

Virtual Private Server hosting is more secure as compared to shared hosting. With Virtual Private Server hosting, each server has its own security configuration and file system. In shared hosting, all accounts are placed on one server that operates under one operating system. One malware attack can destroy the operating system's entire file system, and all the data.

Performance

When you choose a shared hosting plan, you pay that for a plan which guarantees a specific bandwidth. A shared hosting company can however oversell its services as all the accounts run on a similar hardware. This means that you may end up having a lower bandwidth than the specific one you paid for. With Virtual Private Server hosting however, a virtual slice of the main server's hardware gets allotted to your server, ensuring that your resources are available to you at all times.

Administration

With Virtual Private Server hosting, you administer the server by choosing the specific operating system you want and you also have more say in the running of your website. With shared hosting, you do not have any control regarding the operating system that is used and the web host can restrict the software you use on your site.

Anybody that wants to create a web site and go live on the Internet with it needs to understand the basics of hosting so that they choose the right deal. To understand more about shared web hosting visit http://www.compila.com and for more information on VPS hosting take a look at http://www.compila.com/virtual-private-servers/vps-hosting.html so that you can get a good overview on this. If you are going to launch a small web site or blog then shared hosting should be fine for this.