Today every business needs an online presence and therefore you need a website to represent your business online.
Now you need to host this website on a server to make it accessible to your web audience.
When it comes to hosting service providers, you can completely get lost in the abundant options available out there.
And it is not only the hosting provider you need to choose, but you also need to decide the type of hosting that best suits your business requirements.
This guide will simplify things for you and help you make the right choice for your business.
Here, we will discuss the two most common and popular hosting setups: Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting
We will study what is shared and dedicated hosting along with its pros n cons to give you a clear understanding of how they stand on opposite ends….
What is Shared Hosting?
In Shared Hosting,your website is stored with many other users on a single server and the cost is also comparatively very less making it ideal for new website owners. All the server resources like memory, bandwidth are shared with other website users and have some benefits as well as certain drawbacks.
Advantages of Shared Hosting
- Cost effective – Low cost of shared hosting plays a vitalrole in making it the most popular among startup businesses. The maintenance cost is distributed among all the users listed on the same server, reducing the individual cost drastically.
- Easy to manage – The shared hosting servers come with a user-friendly control panel to simplify your website management task. You need not have sound technical knowledge as most of the maintenance tasks like server configuration, installing updates, troubleshooting is done by the hosting provider.
Disadvantages of Shared Hosting
- Performance issues – Low to medium traffic websites perform well on shared servers but any website with high traffic can slow down all the websites on the same server. The obvious reason is the sharing of bandwidth, disk space, memory, and all other resources available on the single server.
- Customization – You do not have the flexibility to customize the server configuration based on your website requirement. Your website is hosted on the pre-configured server according to the plan you choose. Specific software requirements cannot be met with a shared hosting service.
- Security risk – Your website is stored with hundreds of other websites on the same server hence if any website is hacked, the security of all the websites is compromised.Another major issue is that the same IP address is used by all the websites on the same server so if any user is spamming, the entire server IP is blacklisted, impacting your business.
What Is Dedicated Hosting?
As the name suggests, in Dedicated Hosting, the entire server is dedicated to your website. Your website is exclusively hosted on the server and all the server resources are used dedicatedly used by your website. It provides great power and stability to your website but at the same time, comes with a comparatively higher cost…….after all premium services come at a premium cost.
Advantages of Dedicated Hosting
Server Security – Your website poses no security threat from other websites as the server space is not shared between other users. Plus, you can customize the server by installing additional security enhancement programs. Also, the dedicated hosting provider proactively monitors your website round the clock to ensure maximum uptime and optimum performance.
Reliability – With dedicated hosting, your website performance is not affected by the increase in traffic flow to other websites as in the case of shared hosting. The server stores only your website and all its resources are dedicated to your site which will maintain high performance and increase customer reliability on your business.
Maximum Resources – Dedicated hosting provider uses top of the range hardware to provide high quality service and reliability to its customers.Additionally, you cancustomize your server resources according to your website needs.So you get the best quality resources dedicated to your website performance.
Control – Since you are paying for the entire server, you have complete control over it. You can configure the server as per your needs and also install any software required.
Disadvantages of Dedicated Hosting
High Cost – Dedicated Hosting isexpensive as theentire server and all its resources are dedicated to a single user, unlike shared hosting. It is not reasonable for startups and small businesses with limited traffic flow.
Technical Expertise – As the entire server is owned by you, highly trained technicians are required to manage your server. You need to perform various management task like configuration, installation, updates and other activities to keep the server up and running constantly.
However, if you go with managed dedicated hosting services, you are relieved from the intricate server management tasks and all your server responsibility is taken by the hosting provider.
Hence, making the right choice while selecting a web hosting plan can save time and money. A growing business having great potential can benefit immensely with dedicated hosting while beginners should opt for shared hosting service.
I hope this article gives you a great understanding of differentiating between shared and dedicated hosting and choosing the right hosting plan for your business.
For any quires related to hosting plans, please feel free to contact us on info@gettyhosting.com
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