Types of web hosting, explained

There are four main types of web hosting — shared, VPS, cloud and dedicated — plus "managed" hosting, which describes how much the host looks after for you rather than a fifth kind of server. The single idea that separates them is how much of a server is yours: shared splits one machine among many sites, a VPS carves out a guaranteed slice, cloud spreads you across many machines, and dedicated hands you a whole one. Price and control rise together as you move up that list. Most sites start on shared and never need to leave.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting puts your site on one server alongside many others, all drawing from the same pool of resources. It is the cheapest tier — roughly $3 to $5 a month on an annual intro term and $8 to $18 at renewal as of September 2026 — and the right home for personal sites, blogs, portfolios and most small business sites. The host handles all the server maintenance, security patching and updates, so you never touch the underlying machine. The trade-off is the "noisy neighbour" effect: because resources are shared, another busy site on your server can occasionally dent your performance. For a normal small site that is rare and minor, which is exactly why shared hosting is the sensible default.

VPS hosting

A VPS — virtual private server — still lives on a physical machine shared with others, but software carves out a fixed portion of processor, memory and storage that is yours alone, so a neighbour's traffic spike cannot steal your resources. It typically costs $10 to $60 a month and comes in two flavours: managed, where the host runs the server software for you, and unmanaged, where you administer the Linux server yourself and pay less. A VPS is the natural step up when shared hosting starts to strain — pages loading slowly under normal traffic, or a site that needs specific software a shared plan will not allow. It is more capable and more predictable than shared, at the cost of either a higher price or some technical responsibility.

Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting runs your site across a network of servers rather than a single machine, so it can add capacity on demand and keep running if one server fails. That makes it the choice for sites with spiky or fast-growing traffic — a store bracing for a sales rush, or an app that must scale up and back down. Pricing is often usage-based, which can be cheaper when traffic is low and pricier during surges. Be aware that "cloud" and "VPS" are used loosely in marketing: many hosts label a scalable VPS plan "cloud," so read what is actually included rather than trusting the word. For most small sites, cloud is more than you need until reliability under variable load genuinely affects your revenue.

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting gives you an entire physical server with nobody else on it — the most performance, the most control and the highest price, commonly $80 a month into the hundreds. It suits high-traffic sites, large online stores, resource-heavy applications and organisations with specific security or compliance needs. Unless you have a clear, measurable reason to need a whole server, you almost certainly do not: the jump from a well-sized VPS or cloud plan to dedicated is a large cost increase for capacity most sites never touch. Many sites that think they need dedicated actually need a properly sized VPS with a caching layer.

Managed hosting — a service level, not a box

"Managed" describes how much of the technical work the host takes on, and it can apply to any tier above shared. On a managed plan the host handles server setup, software updates, security, backups, caching and performance tuning, so you only look after your site. The most common form is managed WordPress hosting, from around $20 to $35 a month, which runs on a platform tuned specifically for WordPress. It costs more than plain shared hosting and gives you less low-level control by design — you are paying to not think about the server. Our explainer on managed hosting covers exactly what "managed" includes and when it is worth the premium.

Which type should you choose?

Start on shared hosting and move up only when a real symptom appears — slow pages under normal traffic, resource-limit warnings from your host, or downtime during modest spikes. When that happens, a VPS or cloud plan is usually the right next step, not a leap to dedicated. If you would rather not manage a server at all and you run WordPress, managed hosting skips the tiers entirely. For a side-by-side breakdown of the four tiers, read shared vs VPS vs cloud vs dedicated; if you are still at the very beginning, the what is web hosting guide sets up all of this from scratch.