SHARED or DEDICATED hosting: What is best for you?

Handling with the technical part of the online business like considering shared or dedicated hosting can be overwhelming. Some people think that there isn’t a big difference but they’re wrong. There are some basic distinct. You need to know what type of hosting – shared or dedicated, will fix perfectly for your target. 

The United States was famous for The Land of Unlimited Opportunities because an idea was enough to make you a rich guy.

Today the things are different. The whole world is The Land of Unlimited Opportunities because of the Internet.

You understand how important for your business success your presentation in the web world is.

Not only appearance but the functionality of your site is something that you should think over.

Of course, usually, entrepreneurs aren’t professional computer workers – programmers, developers, designers… Computer terminology probably sounds you like Chinese and it’s normal. Now I will help you with first steps.

1. Shared hosting

Obviously, this is a hosting which you share with other users. In details that means a server serves a few sites with their own domain names.

There are two red points for this choice:

• It’s cheap – The host company gives one server to multiply users and then separate maintenance cost between them. This option is perfect if you have a small budget. 
• No need any computer skills – The host company cares about everything – maintenance, protection… If you’re having trouble working on your site, just call your host administrator.

But there are two big black points:

• Shared hosting crashes are something expected. Too many sites overload the system. Imagine a tree with many branches – this is world web. There are branches with many birds perched on it. These branches are shared hosting. Each bird is a different site. If birds become many, the branch will break. Something like this happens to your site, but while the birds fly away, your site just fails. And you must call your administrator. It’s completely possible to call him more often than your partner’s calls. Independently of words – “unlimited bandwidth” in your contract. Site’s crash = lost a customer. Think about it!
• Shared hosting is more vulnerable. Let’s imagine again. If you share your house with other stranger people, it’s possible some of them invite a suspicious person. It’s equal here. Malware could enter through other sites with which you share hosting. If you work with money, accounts, and other important data, this could be fatal.

2. Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting offers a server only for your website. You will be the only bird on the branch. This sounds very good – your own computer in your host company with a web server, needed software and Internet connection. But let’s see the advantages one by one and then disadvantages – if they exist.

Advantages:

• –    Every computer professional will recommend dedicated hosting for sites with many visitors. It can serve high traffic easy. Temporary users are high-feds, they expect site’s loading only 1-2 seconds after they become nervous and search for alternative.
• –    You can make your site safer with high-level security control. Of course, no one can give you full guarantee against hackers and virus attacks but you can prevent some of them better than shared hosting owners.
• –    You control what happens to your site. You can use every application that you need. In general, you can customize your site exactly like you want. That is impossible with shared hosting.
• I can bet, you want dedicated hosting badly but there are some disadvantages:
• –    Dedicated hosting is expensive, really expensive like 40 – 60  times more expensive than shared hosting. If shared will cost 2,5 USD a month, dedicated will be 80-120USD for this period. I’ll be happy if this cost won’t scary you but most small companies can afford this price.
• –    Dedicated hosting needs technical support.  You should appoint computer specialist or do-it-yourself if you have computer skills but this commitment can’t be done among other things. You should manage your server and keep track of its good functionality. There is another problem – high-level security needs daily updates and installation of new programs. You can’t make any compromises to make sure you are well protected. Hackers don’t need many opportunities to attack you. Common cases are a denial of service (DoS) attacks, unauthorized access and cross-site scripting (XSS).  So they can penetrate your customers’ computers.

I’m sure you already know what variant is good for you – shared or dedicated hosting. In a few words – if you plan to make a blog or some kind of personal site, don’t have a big budget and computer skills, your option is shared hosting. If you plan to make a site with large traffic, want maximal security, have computer skills or you have someone on your team with the technical skills and a huge budget – dedicated hosting is your solution.