If you have a medium-size business, the choice of hosting solution can be a complicated issue. From one point of view, you can’t afford an expensive web hosting server, from another – your needs are constantly growing. How to make the right choice? This guide will touch upon different aspects of shared and dedicated servers for you to make the final decision.
Bandwidth and Disk Space
Bandwidth is the traffic used by a server over a month. To calculate your bandwidth needs roughly, you should estimate the amount of data moving in and out the network in a month for a specific server.
When it comes to shared hosting, many companies cheat offering “unlimited” bandwidth. However, every web hosting plan has some limits, so ask your provider about it and make decision based on the volume of traffic managed. If this amount is too large, dedicated web hosting server would be the right choice: even if you lack the resources, you will be able to add resources up.
Performance
The better your website performs, the better user experience will be. Since shared hosting has limits, you can never be sure in website performance. Besides, other users can affect it, if their website starts requiring too many resources: your visitors will be annoyed by downtime. Some shared hosting providers can even penalize or charge for consuming too much extra bandwidth.
With a dedicated hosting plan you won’t have to worry about the amount of traffic. The server will belong only to you, and you will always have a sufficient volume of resources (besides, you can always scale up and down). So if you want to ensure excellent customer experience, dedicated hosting will be an ideal solution.
Security
Due to the fact that shared hosting means having neighbors using the same server, you can’t be sure in security of your website. A single script with error can cause the entire server to crash, and you don’t know what kinds of websites are hosted on your server. If they are promoted by illegal means, your website can be blacklisted, too.
With dedicated hosting service you have much more reliability and security. A dedicated server allows using all types of software and scripts, and it is 24/7 monitored to ensure that everything runs smoothly. In case of failures, provider’s support service will help you.
Control
Shared hosting is suitable for those users who don’t have enough profound knowledge to control and manage every single aspect. However, the lack of control can take its toll. Scripting language and the types of used files are limited, you can’t use advanced features and applications.
If you need overall control, choose a dedicated server. You should have some technical knowledge to handle it, but managed dedicated servers are not too hard to deal with. You can use almost any type of software and scripting language and run applications for your special needs.
Cost
Affordability is the main reason why so many businesses choose shared hosting. However, some cheap hosting plans are not reliable and provide poor performance. If you can’t afford costly web hosting, choose shared hosting plans accurately.
Dedicated servers come with all possible advantages, but at a high cost. Although minor technical issues are solved for free, in case of major problems you will have to pay for assistance. Therefore, dedicated web hosting is recommended for large websites and relatively big organizations.
The choice of hosting type should depend on your needs, website peculiarities, budget and the amount of control you want. Don’t hesitate to read reviews and consult with our agents. Remember that your decision will define website success in the future.
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