Dedicated hosting and shared hosting are the complete opposite of each other, with dedicated hosting the most advanced form of web hosting and shared hosting the most basic. Dedicated hosting is suitable for larger websites and websites that receive a large amount of traffic.
A web server is a piece of equipment which web pages are uploaded to. For a website to appear on the internet, and be seen by others, it needs to be hosted – it needs web hosting. When a web hosting company is hired they upload the web pages of a site onto the web server, and this will make it viewable to anyone with an internet connection.
The difference between dedicated hosting and shared hosting is whether an entire server is used for a website or only part of a server. With dedicated hosting a website uses an entire web server whereas with shared hosting the server is shared with other websites.
There are several advantages to dedicated hosting. It is more reliable and more secure as it is not impacted by other websites sharing the server. This means there is less chance of the server overloading. When choosing dedicated hosting website owners have more choice over the hosting and the way it is set up and run, including which hardware is used. Dedicated hosting is the optimum level of hosting. It means it doesn’t take long to load sites and the chance of there being problems is limited.
The main benefit of shared hosting is simple – it is cheaper than dedicated hosting. It is a less advanced form of hosting so it costs less. It is simple to set up, something the hosting company will usually take care of. In most cases it includes decent customer support, though it may not be as high quality as it is will dedicated hosting.
Whether you should choose dedicated hosting or shared hosting really depends on your website and its requirements. There are situations where dedicated hosting is absolutely necessary, for example websites that take payments and websites where it is crucial they don’t go down. There are even sites that have more than one dedicated server. This is normally very large sites or for backup, so if one server fails the site does not go offline. For very small sites dedicated hosting is rarely necessary, and it is not worth paying extra for something you don’t really need.
Essentially the difference is that you get a dedicated server with dedicated hosting, whereas with shared hosting you share the server with a number of other websites. So it is a choice of sharing a server with others or having your own. With shared hosting you can be influenced negatively by other websites on the same server, but this is not the case if there are no other sites on the server. Dedicated hosting is preferable for larger sites so they don’t slow down. An entire server can cope better with a large amount of content or media such as video and audio. It is also more secure if dealing with bank details.
Andrew Marshall (c)
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