Subscribe to the BlogThe World Wide Web is an amazing thing; with just a computer and an internet connection, you have access to millions of websites and all of the information and entertainment they have to offer. Unlike resources in the real world, these sites never close and can be visited any time of day or night, any time of the year. Websites are available at all times because these sites are hosted on web servers; computers which are designed to stay up and running and connected to the net at all times. Since your home computer isnt really made for the job, you'll need to purchase web hosting services to get your site up and running.
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.
A dedicated web hosting plan has nearly the same specifications as the shared plan, but the site is stored in its own dedicated server. A dedicated server should be your choice if the following are all true.
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 The Highest Performance For Your Site's Visitors
With a good server, a lot of traffic to a single site won't make all that much difference to its performance. However, when there are many websites on a single server and all of them see a lot of traffic, every site hosted on that server will experience slowdowns. When it comes to the basics (like just loading up a page), this may not be too noticeable. However, if your site features a lot of audio or video content, it will load very slowly and this will be an irritant to your visitors. Using a dedicated server means that all of its resources are reserved for your site, so even when you experience heavy traffic you won't see these slowdowns.
You Need Total Control Over Your Web 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 these statements are not all true for your site, then you may be able to stay with shared hosting; but if all are true, you will need to have a dedicated server for your site. Shared hosting is ideal when you're just getting started but at some point, you'll want the security, control and performance you can only get with a dedicated server.
