Your Info House

Often, when business owners are looking to set up or upgrade their website, the question of shared or dedicated hosting comes up. In order to decide which type of hosting package will suit your needs, it is helpful to understand the main differences between the two. Here’s a brief outline that should help you in your decision-making process:

1. Number of Sites Hosted on the Server

This is the primary difference between shared and dedicated hosting. As the names imply, a dedicated hosting package means that your website is the only site hosted on the server. Conversely, when you are on a shared hosting package, your website is hosted along with several other sites on the same server.

2. Availability of Bandwidth or Disk Space

When you have shared hosting, there is a limitation on the amount of disk space you are allocated or may use. This is because the server is shared among several different companies’ websites. If you happen to exceed that disk space, you are charged accordingly. When you have dedicated hosting, you basically have the entire server to yourself. There is no sharing of disk space so there are no limitations on the amount of space available to you on the server.

3. Cost and Affordability

Shared hosting was created in order to offer small and medium-sized businesses a more affordable way to have their websites hosted. Because the server resources are shared among several users, the operating costs are divided up between the different users. This is significantly cheaper than having a dedicated server where you cover the costs of the entire server.

4. Technical Expertise Required

Shared hosting requires little technical expertise as all security and maintenance are provided by the server hosting company as part of your hosting package. Your web designer will upload information to the site and can update it with minimal effort. When you opt for a dedicated server, you will need a technical team to set up, manage and maintain the server. This need for technical expertise adds to the costs of having a dedicated server.

5. Security and Vulnerability

On shared hosting packages, the hosting company implements firewalls and general server security to ensure the stability of the server. A good hosting provider will be proactive and ensure that the server is maintained with the latest security updates. When you have a dedicated server, this then becomes your responsibility. On the plus side though, a dedicated server is less vulnerable to falling prey to viruses, malware and spyware because yours is the only site on the server and you can control which programs you use and load. On a shared server, your vulnerability increases as you will have no control over what programs other users sharing the server use. If their site is infected, this could put your site at risk because you share the same IP address.

6. Website Blacklisting

On a shared server, you could be more vulnerable to blacklisting by search engines and corporate servers, even when your site is clean. This is because you share an IP address and any other site on your server could be spamming people. When they get blacklisted, you could inadvertently get blacklisted along with everyone else on the same server. On a dedicated server, you have far more control over the content of the server and you will not get blacklisted unless you have breached internet protocols.

7. Limitations on Scripts and Programs

Some servers are designed to host specific web scripts and programs. On a shared server, you may need to design your site according to the specifications of your hosting provider. On a dedicated server, there are generally no limitations or restrictions as to which script or programs you run. You have complete freedom to choose the software that will best suit your purposes.

8. Server Response and Performance

Depending on how efficient your hosting provider is, this could be a large differentiating factor. On shared hosting, you are sharing space with other websites. Should they generate a very large amount of traffic, they could clog up the bandwidth and cause response time on your site to be very slow. A good hosting company will monitor this and make adjustments accordingly so performance on your site is not affected. A bad hosting company will simply say that it is a downside of shared hosting. On a dedicated server, this will never be an issue because you are the sole user of the server.

9. Server Reliability

In theory, because you have greater control on a dedicated server, you should experience greater reliability than with shared hosting. However, because the majority of companies use shared hosting, server hosting companies have had to ensure greater reliability on shared servers. A good hosting company will ensure that regular maintenance is performed and that disk usage is effectively managed so the server is never overloaded to the point where it crashes.

10. Small, Medium or Large Business?

Most often, because of cost considerations, it is only larger companies that will have dedicated servers. A company also needs to have the technical expertise to maintain a dedicated server and often this is not financially viable for smaller businesses. Most small and medium businesses will opt for a form of shared hosting.

11. Level of Control

Most of these differences come down to how much control you want to have over your website and server. A dedicated server offers a great deal of control which is ideal for large companies who are running databases and specific programs that are unique to their business. This control has the added benefits of greater levels of security and flexibility.

Web Hosting at ReviewItOnline.net is a large team of experienced webmasters, web users, site owners and company leaders here to help you – webmasters of the future with all of your website hosting needs. We review companies such as bluehost and fatcow