What is Hosting?

In depth

The 5 main hosting types in 2026: (1) Shared Hosting — one physical server runs 100-1,000 sites that share CPU/RAM. Price $3-$15/mo. Brands: Bluehost, HostGator, SiteGround. Pros: cheap, easy cPanel. Cons: "noisy neighbour" effect (someone else hogs resources and your site slows), shared security (one hacked site can affect all), downtime under traffic spikes.

(2) VPS (Virtual Private Server) — physical server split into virtual machines, each with dedicated CPU/RAM. Price $10-$80/mo. Brands: DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Hetzner (European, excellent price/performance for Georgian users). Requires Linux skills or a managed VPS ($30-$100/mo extra). Ideal for small-to-medium sites (2,000-50,000 visitors/mo) when shared can't keep up.

(3) Dedicated Server — the whole physical machine is yours. Price $80-$500/mo. Brands: OVH, Hetzner Dedicated, AWS Bare Metal. Worth it only for enterprise workloads (100K+ daily visitors, complex database queries). Overkill for Georgian small business.

(4) Cloud Hosting (Vercel, Netlify, AWS Amplify, Cloudflare Pages) — auto-scaling infrastructure, pay-for-what-you-use. Pricing: free hobby tier or $20-$200/mo professional. Pros: instant scale (Black Friday spike auto-handled), global CDN, edge functions, automatic SSL, zero server admin. Cons: vendor lock-in, prices can balloon during spikes. Craftwebstudio recommendation — Vercel Pro ($20/mo) for Next.js sites.

(5) Serverless / Functions-as-a-Service (AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions) — discrete functions executed on request. Pay per execution. Ideal for API endpoints (image optimization, form submissions, webhooks). Pricing: 100,000 requests/mo free (AWS), $0.20/million after.

WordPress-specific hosts: (1) WP Engine — managed WordPress, $25-$285/mo, premium support; (2) Kinsta — dedicated WordPress on Google Cloud, $35-$450/mo, performance-focused; (3) Cloudways — managed Cloud (DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP), $14-$100+/mo, balance of ergonomics + control; (4) Pressable, Pantheon — enterprise WordPress.

E-commerce hosting (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce): Shopify is fully hosted — $29-$2,000/mo, you never think about hosting. WooCommerce needs WordPress hosting + extra resources (cart sessions, product queries) — Cloudways ($30-$60/mo) or a Kinsta WooCommerce plan ($35+/mo).

Georgian hosting providers (.ge + Tbilisi data center): (1) Proservice (proservice.ge) — full-service hosting + domain + SSL, ₾15-₾80/mo; (2) Hosting.ge — Tbilisi data center, ₾10-₾50/mo; (3) 1tone.ge — managed VPS $10-$50/mo; (4) Caucasus Online — enterprise + telco. Local hosting benefits: latency from Tbilisi <20ms (vs 100-150ms US/EU), Georgian-language support, GEL invoicing. Drawbacks: smaller scale, weaker ecosystem than Vercel/AWS.

2026 verdict: marketing/portfolio site → Vercel free; small business + WordPress → Cloudways $30/mo; e-commerce → Shopify; enterprise → AWS or dedicated. The Tbilisi-specific latency case applies only to heavily Georgia-targeted businesses.