An Internet connection is all that is needed to access millions of websites around the web. This is possible because these sites are hosted on computers that constantly run so they remain online 24 hours a day and 7 days of week. Of course, the average computer cannot do that unless it is running an extremely fast connection and remains turned on. Therefore, anyone that wants to set up their own website needs a web hosting provider.
Web hosting companies offer various plans of services which keep your site running and available to visitors. There are free web hosting providers out there, but these services are notoriously unreliable. Most web hosting companies do offer some low-cost starter packages, but they also offer more comprehensive packages including dedicated web hosting.
Dedicated web hosting plans are much the same as a shared hosting plan, with one important difference: the site is held on its own server. Do you need dedicated hosting? Look at the following statements ” if all of them are true, then dedicated hosting is for you.
You Need Your Site To Be Safe
It’s important to keep your site well protected. This consists of measures like using strong passwords to keep your databases safe from hackers and using the latest and most secure versions of all of the web applications in use on your site. However, when you use shared hosting, even the best security measures can’t entirely protect you from attacks. An attack against another site on the same server where your website is hosted could mean that your site feels some of the effects of the attack. When your site is hosted on a dedicated server, your site is the only one which needs to implement security measures, since it is the only site on the server.
You Want Your Website To Perform Well For Your Visitors
With most web hosting, a site’s performance won’t be too severely affected by heavy traffic to a single site. However, when you use shared hosting and there is a lot of traffic to many of the sites hosted on this server simultaneously, slowdowns can happen. This won’t usually affect loading a simple webpage in any noticeable way, but if your site has a lot of multimedia content, your visitors will be able to notice (and be annoyed by) the slowdowns in loading and playing this content. With a dedicated server, all of the server’s resources are reserved for your site alone, so your visitors won’t have to suffer through slow performance even when your site is experiencing heavy traffic.
You Want To Have Total Control Over Your Server
A shared web hosting server gives you a lot of freedom in uploading websites, web applications, and controlling the privileges from there. However, if you want to change certain server specific settings like VPS and root privileges for multiple webmasters to manage your website, it is better to get a dedicated server. Companies and businesses managing their own websites will find them easier to manage in a dedicated server.
If not all of these three conditions hold true for your website, then you can probably keep using shared hosting for the time being. Shared hosting is great for your site when it’s just getting started but as your site and your online business presence grow, you’ll need the control, the performance and the security which a dedicated server provides.