The Difference between Shared and Dedicated Hosting

• 16 August 2012
• by: Georgios
• in: Web Tutorials

Web hosting enables users to make their site available to be viewed by visitors through the Internet. It is significant to choose the best web hosting company that will give the most excellent service. At the same time, it is also important to come up with a domain name and have it registered. When planning for all Internet needs, the user should be able to choose between shared and dedicated hosting.

Shared web hosting allows numerous small users to share the same server which enables them to upload their respective websites. This is usually chosen by beginners, small business owners, and those people who just need very low bandwidth and disk space requirement. The good thing about this is that it is cost-effective. Because many sites are sharing the same server, it is economical. Also, security is the responsibility of the provider, and there’s no need to worry about it. They are also the one to offer the needed hardware. However, the IP address is shared by multiple websites. Due to this, it is important for the web host to suspend websites that send spam or do illegal activities because when they become blacklisted, the other websites will also suffer. Response time also becomes longer when there are more websites on just one server. Visitors will have to wait longer as they browse through the site. Overloading is also difficult to avoid, especially when the server host does not properly observe the activities in the server, making it crash often.

In dedicated web hosting, every website has a corresponding web server of its own. This is very ideal when the user expects high volume of traffic. It is capable of handling traffic without trouble because it has far greater bandwidth as compared to shared web hosting. It may be more expensive but it has greater benefits and features. Control and responsibility is purely assigned to the user alone. There will be much faster response in terms of high traffic volume due to the fact that a particular server only has to respond to information requests from one site only. With this, users will be able to check out the site without having to wait. It is also notable that there is no bandwidth penalty. There are no limitations because it is thought that much bandwidth is needed because a dedicated server has been required by the user.

Shared and dedicated hosting each has their own sets of benefits and disadvantages. Make sure that you evaluate what you really need for your site in order to choose one that is best for you.