Hosting types compared: shared, VPS, dedicated, public cloud and managed cloud
How each hosting type is usually priced, who it tends to fit and what to watch, so you can shortlist the right type before comparing providers.
This table compares types of hosting, not named providers, and no row is ranked above another. The best fit depends on how much traffic and data you have, how much control you need, who will look after the servers and what your privacy obligations are. The pricing column describes structure only; any amounts elsewhere on this site are illustrative.
Use the table to choose one or two types, then price them with the monthly cost estimator and check them against the best-fit checklist.
Select a column header to sort.
| Hosting type | How it is usually priced | Tends to fit | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Flat monthly or multi-year prepaid plan; introductory price then a renewal price; add-ons for email, backups, SSL or extra sites | Brochure websites, blogs, small WordPress sites with modest traffic | Renewal increases, resource limits that are enforced but vaguely stated, limited control over location and backups |
| Managed WordPress or website hosting | Monthly plan by number of sites, visits or storage; overage fees above plan limits | Businesses that want updates, caching and backups handled for them | Visit or bandwidth caps, overage charges, plugin restrictions, migration fees |
| VPS (virtual private server) | Fixed monthly price per plan (vCPU, RAM, disk, transfer allowance); extra for backups, IPs, control panel | Small applications, custom sites, staging servers, owners comfortable with Linux or Windows administration | You patch and secure it, transfer allowance and overage, noisy-neighbour performance on cheap plans |
| Dedicated server | Monthly rental per physical server, often with a setup fee and a term; bandwidth and IPs as options; or bought outright and colocated | Steady heavy workloads, licensing that is tied to physical cores, strict isolation needs | Long terms, slower scaling, hardware replacement times, you still manage the operating system unless managed |
| Public cloud (IaaS) on demand | Per second or per hour for compute; per GB-month for storage; per GB for data out; separate charges for IPs, load balancers, snapshots, support | Variable or growing workloads, short projects, teams that automate | Egress and many small line items, idle resources, USD billing, complexity that needs monitoring |
| Public cloud with commitments | Reserved instances, savings plans or committed-use discounts for one or three years, paid upfront, partly upfront or monthly | Steady baseline workloads that will run for the full term | Paying for capacity you no longer need, limits on changing size or region |
| Spot or preemptible capacity | Steep discounts on spare capacity that the provider can reclaim at short notice | Batch jobs, testing, rendering, work that can be interrupted | Interruptions, not suitable for databases or customer-facing services without redundancy |
| Managed cloud (provider or MSP) | Cloud consumption plus a management fee: per server, per user, a percentage of spend or a fixed retainer | Businesses without in-house administrators that need monitoring, patching and backups | Overlapping fees, unclear responsibilities, exit and handover terms, mark-ups on resold cloud |
| Canadian-owned or Canadian-region hosting | Any of the models above, delivered from data centres in Canada | Organisations that want or are required to keep data in Canada | Data centre location does not by itself settle legal access or backup and support locations; check the contract |
Pricing structures vary by provider and change often. Before you rely on any comparison, open the provider's current public price page or calculator for the specific Canadian region and note the date. Tax treatment depends on your province and the supplier's GST/HST registration: see the Canada Revenue Agency and, in Quebec, Revenu Québec. For privacy obligations, see the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and Quebec's Commission d'accès à l'information. For cloud security guidance, see the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.