If you’re looking for a deal on a new web hosting package, here are some of the top web hosting offers for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and beyond:

• HostGator: 50% off on all web hosting services. This includes shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers and Windows hosting! This is one of the biggest sales on web hosting every year but it only lasts one day.

 

• IX Hosting: 55% off the Expert Web Hosting Plan starting Friday, November 23rd and lasting through Wednesday, November 28th.

 

• FatCow: Monthly cost on its regular web hosting package has been reduced almost 15% from $3.67/month to $3.15/month until Tuesday, November 27th.

 

• iPage: One of the best deals as the monthly price has been slashed over 40% from $3.50/month to just $1.99/month from today until next Tuesday.

 

• HostMonster & BlueHost: Take $1 off the monthly price of $4.95 to $3.95 on Black Friday only.

Learn more about all these web hosting companies starting with our Top 10 Web Hosting list.

Web Hosting Tutorial Series

Video #3: What’s the difference between shared, dedicated, and other types of hosting?

This video tutorial will teach you about the different types of hosting so that you can determine what type of service might be right your web site.

In our first video, we briefly touched on the different types of web hosting that are available on the market today. If you are just getting started, more than likely you’ll want a shared hosting provider for your website.

Shared hosting means that your website is hosted on a server that is shared by other customers and that your web hosting provider is the one responsible for managing and monitoring your site. Inexpensive and popular, shared hosting is the easiest and cheapest way to get started with hosting your website online.

However, if your account frequently uses up a lot of server resources – for example if your website draws incredibly high amounts of traffic or uses a lot of video – your hosting provider will probably require you to upgrade to something more suited to accommodate your website’s needs:

Reseller hosting. One option is another type of “shared” hosting called reseller hosting. This basically allows you to sell shared hosting accounts to other people. Sometimes a reseller server will be less crowded and better suited to websites with high resource usage.

Dedicated servers. A dedicate server is the most expensive form of web hosting, costing anywhere from $40-100 a month. However, unless you know how to manage the server yourself, a dedicated server is probably not a smart option. If you don’t know a thing about server administration, you would probably need an entry level managed server, which is even more expensive.

Managed dedicated servers. A managed dedicated server leaves the hardest parts of operating a server to experienced technicians, allowing you to focus more on your websites, less on the technology. Typically an entry level managed dedicated server will cost around $200 a month.

Virtual dedicated server. On a slightly smaller scale is the virtual dedicated server (VDS), also known as virtual private server (VPS). In this situation, a hosting company divides a very powerful dedicated server up into separate “virtual” servers using virtualization software. Each virtual server gets its own operating system, and acts almost exactly like a real dedicated server. How powerful a VDS truly is can vary depending on the hosting provider and the plan you choose.

How can you tell which one is right for you? It all depends on what your website requires. Shared hosting is well-suited for personal websites and small businesses. A dedicated server is more appropriate for larger hosting needs, yet is considerably more expensive. By knowing your site requirements, you can determine which is solution is right for you.

Up Next:

Now that you are clear on the types of different hosting, let’s talk about the software that allows you to manage your website, the control panel.