Shared vs. Dedicated Hosting – The Pros and Cons

 Just like business website development, getting your website hosted is something that requires lots of contemplation.

You have to choose a reliable web hosting company that offers cost-effective yet high-quality hosting services.

In addition to this, someone who’s purchasing a web hosting plan needs to be aware of the differences between hosting types in order to be able to pick a hosting plan that suits their needs.

For instance, if you own a small website that doesn’t get much web traffic regularly, a shared hosting plan can work well. However, owners of larger websites may have to consider a different option if they want things to keep running smoothly.

 

Shared Web hosting

If you buy a shared hosting plan, you’d be sharing the resources of a single server with multiple other websites.

Although this reduces the overall cost that a single website owner has to pay, it also comes with certain risks and disadvantages.

The Pros

There are two major benefits of choosing a shared hosting plan:

1.     It would be light on your pocket.

2.     You can manage your website easily through a user-friendly control panel. Plus, since the web hosting provider is responsible for complete server maintenance, you won’t need to get into any sort of technical stuff.

The Cons

Sharing a server comes with the following disadvantages and risks:

1.     Shared space can affect your website’s performance. If a single site gets too much traffic, the speed of other sites is likely to get impacted. Also, there’s a risk of accidental server crashes and server overload.

2.     The security of your website can be compromised in case of shared hosting. If one of the websites hosted on the same shared server is conducting spam activity, the server’s IP address can get blacklisted, hence negatively affecting your site’s authority and search engine rankings.

Dedicated Server Hosting

As the name suggests, all the resources of a dedicated server are used by a single website owner.

You can host multiple websites if you want to, as well as scale the resources as per your need.

Let’s get into its pros and cons!

The Pros

The benefits of buying a dedicated server are:

1.     Maximum utilization of all the resources of a dedicated server and minimum security risks. No bad neighbour would impact your site’s ranking or authority. Also, you can enjoy optimum performance and lightning-fast speed.

2.     Flexible plans and ability to customize the hosting environment. You’d be provided with root access so you can update and modify the software as per your desire.

The Cons

Here are some of the disadvantages of dedicated server hosting:

1.     High costs

2.     You’d need to have prior technical knowledge to be able to manage your dedicated server in case you don’t go for a managed dedicated server plan.

3.     The complete server maintenance would be left up to you if you haven’t asked your hosting company for server management – which is a service that comes with additional cost. 

Before you pick your hosting plan, analyse your needs carefully and purchase a package that suits you well.