As a website owner you’re going to have a lot of questions to ask yourself, if you want your website to be successful. What will my site look like? How will I best serve my audience? What type of content will I create for my audience? And so forth.
However, one question that commonly gets overlooked is exactly what kind of hosting you’ll need for your website. The two main types of hosting you’ll be choosing between are shared and dedicated hosting. Below we’ll dive into what these actually are, so you can decide if your website will need a dedicated server, or not.
What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is one of the least expensive forms of web hosting available. Essentially, you’re sharing the server resources with other sites that are using the same hardware.
This means your site is only using a portion of the total power and speed of the server. Which can lead to performance declines if other clients begin to use more server resources. For example, if you have a site that started to get a ton of traffic, this will decrease the performance of other sites on the server.
Being cost effective, this is a common option for those who are just starting, or are keen on keeping their websites small. However, if you’re intending on growing your website and receiving large amounts of traffic, then dedicated hosting might be a better option.
What is Dedicated Hosting?
Dedicated hosting can be very advantageous for your website, but it does come with increased costs. Some dedicated hosting plans can run up into the hundreds of dollars per month and above. However, if you’re at a point where you need dedicated hosting, then hopefully your site is already very profitable.
Dedicated hosting generally provides your site with greater security. On a shared server, if you’re sharing the space with a site that isn’t practicing solid security measures, then your site can also be put at risk.
Dedicated hosting also gives you much more control over your hosting environment. This can be advantageous if you’re more technical in nature, but if you’re not, then you might want to use a dedicated server that comes equipped with a solid support staff.
Additional features that come equipped with dedicated hosting includes greater bandwidth for increased traffic, along with greater flexibility to create the ideal hosting environment for your website.
The Purpose of Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting exists to provide a stable, speedy, and customized hosting environment for larger websites (or sites that receive a lot of traffic). If you began on a shared hosting plan, but now are receiving complaints of slow loading speed, site performance, and functionality, then it might be time to upgrade your hosting environment.
Dedicated hosting can also be less susceptible to hacking and other online threats, since you aren’t sharing the server with a bunch of unknown sites.
If you want a site that is faster, more reliable, and has more advanced security features, then it might be time to upgrade to a dedicated host. If you’re happy keeping your site small, with minimal levels of traffic, then a shared hosting plan could suit your website just fine. Whichever option you choose, W3HUB has hosting plans for every type of website owner, all backed by 99.9% uptime.
