Shared and Dedicated Hosting are two of the most common types of web hosting available.
In Shared Hosting, your website is hosted with other websites on a single server, meaning, you have neighboring websites that share the server with you. In contrast, in Dedicated Hosting, you have the entire server and all its resources to yourself. It’s just your website that is hosted on a physical server.
Though it may seem like Dedicated Hosting is more advantageous, both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. And both are required in the web hosting world.
Below we have outlined how Dedicated Hosting and Shared Hosting stack up against each other:
- Performance
Website performance plays a crucial role in attracting new visitors, keeping customers on the website for longer and boosting traffic conversion. Therefore,it is highly recommended to avoid selecting a hosting provider that offers below 99.99% uptime. 0.01% is kept for some unexpected factors like DDoS attacks, hardware issues or power outages that can cause downtime for some time.
Generally, if we compare the performance of dedicated and shared servers, the former will be more reliable and faster as it offers more resources like RAM, CPU, etc., and all the resources are used by just your website. Moreover, with the shared server, you cannot be sure about the credibility of your neighbours. If their activities have a negative impact on the server, the performance and traffic of your website will also be impacted.
- Costs
In Shared Hosting, as the server resources are divided between several users, the cost of hosting is less for every individual website owner. Whereas, in Dedicated Hosting, as the entire server is dedicated to just one user, it costs more.
Initially, you can start with Shared Hosting as you won’t need much resources and you also need to keep your cost in check. Once your website starts growing and attracting higher traffic, you can move to Dedicated Hosting.
- Technical Knowledge
In terms of technical knowledge, Shared Hosting is one of the hassle-free options to choose. As multiple users share the server, the hosting company is responsible for controlling and maintaining all the aspects of the server.
However, Dedicated Hosting can be prohibitive to website owners with limited technical knowledge, as most of its benefits rely on administrative implementation.
- Security
In terms of security, Shared Hosting plans are more susceptible to cyber-attacks than Dedicated Hosting. Because multiple users share the server, which opens up opportunities for security breaches.
So, if server security is a concern (which is there for most people), ensure that you host your site with a reputable hosting company that you can rely on to protect your server against attacks and damages.
- Flexibility and customizability
As one physical server is shared amongst multiple websites in Shared Hosting, any changes to the back end will be applied to all websites. Therefore, it allows for little to no scope for customization. Though some web hosting plans may allow for flexibility in the features that are allotted to Shared Hosting users (like more cloud storage or more FTP users), this is the only scope for personalization.
With Dedicated Hosting, you can customize your hosting completely. As you do not need to share the server with other websites, you have the liberty to select the operating system, configure the server environment for running applications and optimize the amount of memory and bandwidth you would need.
Which hosting option should you choose?
It is essential to choose the right web hosting plan to make the most of it and save lots of money and time. If your current need for resources like memory, bandwidth, control, or computing power is limited, then you can go with Shared Hosting. However, if you need a lot of server resources, and you have a team that can easily manage a specialized web hosting setup, you can opt for Dedicated Hosting. And if you feel you need an option between the two, you can choose VPS Hosting.
Once you have decided on the hosting type, choose a suitable domain name for your business. There are chances that the domain name you think of is taken, in such cases, you can use tools like Whois Lookup to find domain info and check the registry record. Once you find a suitable and available domain name for your website, you can start creating your website.
