Methodology

This tool works in two passes. First, hard requirements you describe (does it need a database? a continuously-running background process? Docker or Kubernetes specifically?) rule out any hosting class that flatly can't provide them — these are elimination facts, never a matter of degree. Only among whatever survives that pass does traffic volume, traffic pattern, and how much of it is logged-in activity get used to rank the remaining options from simplest to most capable.

Traffic bands are a heuristic proxy, not a hard engineering limit — a shared-hosting-shaped site with unusually heavy per-request work can outgrow shared hosting well under the volume shown here, and the reverse is also possible. Treat the recommendation as a strong starting point, not a guarantee.

Limitations

This tool does not estimate dollar pricing, CPU/RAM/storage sizing, or CDN offload percentages, and it never determines regulatory/compliance status — those require vendor-specific or professional review. It assumes one runtime describes the whole thing being hosted (not a mixed static-plus-custom architecture). Where a result does show specific providers, that's a separate step after the hosting category is decided — affiliate relationships never influence the category itself. See our affiliate disclosure for details.