When choosing a hosting service, the first thing you have to decide is which operating system you are going to use, Linux or Windows, the two leading platforms running on web servers. However, many people do not understand the characteristics and differences of Linux/Windows and then make a wrong decision blindly.
As follows, we will provide you with an overview of these differences, and help you know how to choose between Linux hosting and Windows hosting.
Linux Hosting and Windows Hosting: What are the differences?
- Clear about your website needs – It seems that Window hosting is your only option if your website relies on a Microsoft SQL server or ASP.NET, which Linux does not support. In addition to the ASP.NET and MSSQL, the other features that Linux hosting and Windows hosting contain are extremely similar.
- Linux is more secure than Windows – As the Internet products, Linux hosting and Windows hosting inevitably have to face hack attacks. Actually, it would reduce the risk of being attacked if engineers do proper server configuration. We generally think Linux is more secure than Windows is just because there are fewer Linux viruses than Windows viruses.
- Linux server runs faster for PHP and MySQL – It does not happen all the time that Linux hosting achieves faster speed than Windows hosting. But Linux servers act out the faster speed performance than Windows servers when come to PHP and MySQL based applications. For this feature, you can choose Linux hosting as the perfect solution to run WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal websites.
- Windows hosting is more costly than Linux hosting – Almost without exception, Windows shared hosting is around 30% more expensive than Linux shared hosting. Plus, you would be charged an extra $10 to $100 Windows server fee per month if you choose Windows VPS hosting or dedicated server hosting. This is definitely a huge expense.
Linux Hosting and Windows Hosting: Which one should be chosen?
Individual blogs – Linux hosting
If you are a blogger, then Linux hosting should be the right choice.
WordPress is the most commonly used blog tool and CMS based on PHP and MySQL that works perfect on Linux servers. There are many great cheap Linux hosting in the market that might cost you less than $4/mo. For example, Bluehost (www.bluehost.com), the largest Linux shared hosting provider in the world, provide hosting solutions at $3.95/mo, which include tons of features like free domain, unlimited disk space, dual versions of PHP, MySQL, cPanel, and more. People could easily set up a blog. Check out our “hosting for WordPress” page.
ASP.NET developers – Windows hosting
If your website is ASP.NET based, you have no option but Windows hosting. The price is a little bit high, but there are still some great deals you could check out at affordable prices, such as Arvixe (www.arvixe.com), its ASP.NET hosting comes with $5/mo (now you could save 30% with coupon code ‘clue30‘) and include features like the latest version of ASP.NET, MSSQL, and Full-trust level. To find more asp.net hosting, check out our best ASP.NET hosting page.