A web host rents you server capacity for code you wrote yourself. Plans differ in how much of a machine you get and how much software you must maintain.
| Plan | What you get | You maintain | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | Space on a busy server | Your files and CMS | Small sites, blogs |
| VPS | A VM with root access | OS, server, firewall | Custom stacks |
| Dedicated | A physical server | Everything | Heavy steady traffic |
| Cloud IaaS | VMs created by API | As VPS, plus design | Elastic scaling |
| PaaS | Deploy by git push | Code and dependencies | Teams without ops staff |
Shared hosting is the traditional entry point. A control panel such as cPanel 242 or Plesk 389 lets you add domains and subdomains, install WordPress 48 in one click, create email accounts and databases, schedule backups and upload files by FTP or SFTP. Many plans include a free HTTPS certificate. Every site shares the machine's CPU and memory, and you cannot install system software.
A virtual private server (VPS) gives you your own operating system inside a virtual machine. You connect over SSH (Connecting to a Remote Machine) and install whichever stack Choosing Your Server describes. Prices start low: DigitalOcean 553 's smallest Basic Droplet costs $4 per month for one shared vCPU, 512 MiB of memory, a 10 GiB SSD and 500 GiB of transfer. The large cloud providers (AWS 24 , Microsoft Azure 6 , Google Cloud 1 ) sell the same kind of machine with load balancers, managed databases and global regions around it, billed by the second or hour.
PaaS hosts such as Heroku 4,952 , Render 17,318 and Railway 17,267 build and run your app from a Git 1,932 repository and restart it if it crashes. Free tiers come and go: Heroku stopped offering free dynos and databases on November 28, 2022, so check a provider's current terms before you depend on it.
Choosing a host without surprises
Read the renewal price. Introductory discounts often apply only to a prepaid first term; the renewal rate can be several times higher.
Check the limits in the terms of service, not the headline "unlimited": inodes (file count), CPU seconds, database size and email sending caps.
Look for SSH, Git and a current PHP. A host still defaulting to an end-of-life PHP version (PHP 8.2 loses security support on December 31, 2026) is a warning sign.
Own your backups and domain. Register the domain in your own account and keep off-site copies of files and databases, so you can move hosts in an afternoon.