Windows hosting refers to servers that are running on Windows Server software as opposed to Linux. Windows Server OS is separate from the Windows OS that you find running on your computer at home or laptop. The hosting plans below all run on Windows machines from popular web hosts around the world. You can also sort plans by cheapest offering.
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Differences Between Linux And Windows Servers
Linux is the most widely-used server operating system in the world – by a long-shot too. This is mostly due to Linux Server OS being free to use. That said, Windows does offer two significant advantages over Linux:
- It has integration capabilities with other Windows software like Office. While your average user may not gain much benefit from this feature, companies can experience a huge boon to productivity.
- Windows Server can be partitioned to also Linux, granting a level of flexibility not found on Linux.
Windows also runs on the server-side programming language ASP with databases using .NET compared to Linux running on PHP and MySQL. The key takeaway here is that PHP is more common and frequently used by popular CMS platforms like WordPress and Drupal. Since Windows Server can run Linux as well, neither have a significant advantage when it comes to CMS platforms.
Ultimately, the choice of Windows Server over Linux comes down to if you want to integrate your server into other Windows software or if you have server or site modules written in ASP that require the OS to run.
Free Windows Hosting
Unlike Linux, the license to run Windows Server is not free.
That is why it is more common to find cheaper plans with shared or VPS hosting
running on Linux. That said, the price for the Windows OS license is usually
rolled into the price for the hosting plan rather than it being charged as an
additional expense.
