How to choose the right web hosting for your type of website

Answer three questions first

Most people start by comparing prices and disk space. Those come later. The plan that suits you depends on what your site is built with, who visits it and how much of the technical work you are willing to do. This guide matches common kinds of site to the right type of hosting. Once you have chosen a type, our separate article on cheap and reliable hosting covers the price and renewal checks to run before paying.

• What does the site run on: HTML, PHP and WordPress, ASP.NET, or custom software?
• Where are most of your visitors: India, or North America and Europe?
• Who will look after it: you through a control panel, or someone who is comfortable with a Linux server?

A company website, portfolio or small blog

A site with a few pages, a contact form and modest traffic runs well on single-domain Linux hosting. Our Linux plans run in India and include cPanel, free SSL and a one-click installer, and they host one website each. This is the right starting point for most small businesses, and you do not need a server to run a brochure site. Paying for a VPS at this stage mostly buys you maintenance work.

A WordPress site: two good routes

If WordPress is all you run and you want updates and security taken care of, our WordPress plans include managed WordPress updates, a web application firewall, malware scanning and LiteSpeed cache. They run in a US data centre and come in sizes from one site to 25, with limits on concurrent users that are listed on each plan.

If most of your readers are in India and being close to them matters more than managed updates, Linux hosting in our Indian data centre with a one-click WordPress install is also a sound choice. You will look after updates yourself, which takes a few minutes a week. Our installation guide covers both the install and the first settings.

An online store

A store depends more on its database than a brochure site does, because carts, stock and orders cannot be served from a simple page cache. A small WooCommerce shop can begin on WordPress or Linux hosting. Watch for checkout slowing at busy times, or resource limit warnings in your control panel. Those are the signs to move to a VPS, where CPU and RAM are reserved for you. Also keep a working off-server backup, because a lost order history is more expensive than any plan.

An ASP.NET or MS SQL application

If your developer built the site with ASP.NET or it needs MS SQL Server, you need Windows hosting. Linux hosting will not run it. Our Windows plans run in India and use the Plesk control panel. Check with your developer which .NET version the application needs before ordering. If your site is PHP and WordPress, on the other hand, choose Linux, as most PHP software is written and tested with Linux in mind.

Several websites, or websites for clients

If you run a few sites of your own, Multi Domain hosting puts them under one panel. The Linux line uses cPanel and runs in the USA; the Windows line uses Plesk and runs in India. Each comes in sizes of up to five or up to ten websites.

If you build sites for clients and want each to have a separate login, reseller hosting gives you WHM to create separate cPanel accounts under your own brand, on servers in India. Our guide to hosting multiple websites compares these options in detail.

Custom applications and heavy workloads

Node.js or Python services, background workers, a specific database version, or anything else a shared server does not allow calls for a VPS. Our KVM VPS plans come with root access and NVMe storage, and you choose India or the USA for each server. They are self-managed, so someone on your side must handle updates, the firewall and backups. If nobody can, stay on hosting with a control panel or bring in a system administrator first.

When a VPS is consistently busy, or you have large databases that need every core and disk to themselves, the next step is a dedicated server: the entire physical machine, in India.

Then check location, term and email

With the type settled, a few practical details finish the decision:

• Data centre: pick the location nearest most of your paying customers, and check it per product line, since not all of our lines run in the same country
• Term: single-domain and multi-domain hosting have a 12-month minimum, so a one-month trial is not an option on those lines
• Email: mailboxes on the hosting plan are fine for a small team, while a dedicated email service keeps mail separate from your website
• Room to grow: start with the smallest plan that fits now, since moving up later is usually simpler than paying for capacity you will not use
• Help: support is by ticket, answered Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 19:00 IST, so plan major changes for working hours