If you are a web fan, you will certainly have heard of hosting and housing. But do you really know the difference? In this post I give a simple explanation.
What we are talking about
Web hosting is a service that allows the user to rent space on a server, owned by a provider. There are several ones that differ in speed, performance, price and other features. Housing consists of the rental by the user of a physical space, generally inside special cabinets called racks, where the server of the customer’s property is placed; they are usually hosted in Web farms or Data Centers.
They are not two synonyms
This explanation is necessary to clear up any doubts about the difference between these two terms, which are often confused and used as synonyms. In reality, they represent different services with specific and peculiar features that deserve to be explored. The difference between hosting and housing lies mainly in security. Housing gives more freedom but needs expertise to be managed, otherwise it becomes an unnecessary and demanding expense.
What are the factors that distinguish them?
Firstly, freedom of execution. With a server housing you have all the resources you need to build a service that suits your needs, you can customize it as you see fit because the server is yours. With hosting, on the other hand, this freedom is limited. Also because it is more expensive to buy a server and pay a housing fee than with shared hosting. This means that renting space for the machine, with the related purchase of the server, should only be done when the real need exists. Otherwise, a lot of money is wasted with no purpose.
In conclusion, we can say that the substantial difference is that when it comes to housing, the server is owned by the customer. In the case of the dedicated server, it is the hosting provider who owns the server he rents out.
Did you know this difference?
Freely adapted and translated from https://www.serverplan.com/
