By domain

A classification can also be made on the whether your hosting requires a domain or not.

Domain Hosting

Here, the more popular form of hosting is using a domain name. Your website will be hosted on your domain and visitors simply need to type in the domain name to visit the site.

Some hosts offer you a free domain when buying a hosting plan. e.g. over at WebberZone Business Hosting, you can opt for a free domain when you purchase one of the plans.

Alternatively, you buy a domain name from a registrar or reseller. From what I have seen, buying from domain resellers works out cheaper because they pass on the discounts they receive to you. e.g. over at WebberZone Domains, you can pick up a .COM for as little as $7.95.

Sub-domain Hosting

Some hosts as an alternative to domain hosting give you the option of registering a subdomain with them when buying the hosting plan. In such cases, your site will be hosted at subdomain.tldomain.com.

Two popular free blog hosting services, viz. Blogger and WordPress.com host your blog at a subdomain. Your blog would be hosted at subdomain.blogspot.com in the case of the former and subdomain.wordpress.com in case of the latter. Ofcourse, here you only get the blog and they don’t function as a real site host.

A real host that offered this facily would be Tripod

Sub-directory hosting

Still some other hosts offer you your website as a subdirectory of their domain. In these cases you would get hosted at tldomain.com/subdirectory or tldomain.com/~subdirectory.

We’ll next cover classification of hosting by size.