You’re looking into the right type of hosting for your company’s needs as you get ready to launch your website officially. There is no shortage of options for hosting providers and the type of hosting you’ll need. Broadly speaking, the main types of hosting are shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Your choice depends on your company’s specific needs and the site’s needs in part.
Defining Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is a category of managed hosting, where the user has the whole server to themselves. Users of shared hosting share the space with other websites. A dedicated server is all yours.
Obviously, you will pay a higher price for dedicated hosting, but its benefits are far more than shared hosting. The following section will look into them.
Advantages of Dedicated Hosting for Your Business
Most businesses eventually outgrow shared hosting. Dedicated hosting offers the essential advantages of unlimited resources, better security, flexibility, and having your own IP address.
Unlimited Resources
Website traffic, bandwidth, and other resources are capped with shared hosting because the server hosts many sites, sometimes hundreds. You have no neighbors, so to speak, and you won’t share any resources with anyone.
Stricter Cybersecurity
Security is a very important reason why many businesses opt for dedicated hosting. You have full control over the server as you’re not sharing physical space. This means better security for you and your customers.
When you choose shared hosting, you don’t know what other sites you’re sharing a server. If their security is lax or they’re operating semi-legally, this will impact you as their neighbor in the space.
Flexibility
With dedicated hosting, you have the flexibility of almost unlimited customization options. After all, one cannot predict exactly how their business will grow and what kind of scalability will be needed.
Your use of applications, software, RAM, CPU, and operating space will be unlimited, contrary to shared hosting. You can grow as needed and retain control over your site’s appearance.
Your own IP
Dedicated hosting means only you have that specific IP address because each server has its own IP. All sites on a shared server have the same IP address, which comes with a risk. If a neighbor’s site is spammy, this could affect your search engine ranking.
E-commerce sites that need SSL to process payments cannot do without a dedicated IP address.
Is It Time to Switch?
How do you know if it’s time to move up? Consider the following when making this decision.
You’re Processing Sensitive Information
Dedicated hosting is worth upgrading to if your data and your site visitors’ data need to be protected as well as possible. Otherwise, you’re left open to all kinds of attacks as you don’t know who you’re sharing a server with.
With your unique IP address, you have enhanced SSL security, which serves as additional protection for your customers’ sensitive financial data.
You Have High Traffic
Shared hosting places an automatic limit on traffic and bandwidth. If you expect a substantial traffic increase or are already experiencing it, dedicated hosting may be the right choice in the name of user experience and usability.
Choosing the Right Dedicated Hosting Service
You need a decent working knowledge of how much storage, memory, and bandwidth your site will need. They determine the best hosting platforms and the plan tier to fulfill your requirements.
A relatively accurate prediction of future traffic to your website is needed because it will affect the bandwidth required. Opt for high bandwidth if you’re hosting high-def images, running complex scripts, or streaming multimedia files.
Higher RAM will improve the efficiency of your server. It will enable your site and apps to run more quickly, and data will also load faster.
The same goes for storage, particularly regarding security. RAID is one highly secure and preferred storage method (Redundant Array of Disks). Several hard drives can be combined into single storage, making it impossible for gaps to appear and compromise data.
Make Sure You Can Afford It
There are multiple pricing tiers of dedicated hosting, the most expensive hosting category. Establish your budget before checking the plans. You might not need the most expensive option.
Establish Specifications
Finally, every website has unique and critical specifications. The operating system is crucial. If your website is running on Linux, you’re free to use open source-friendlier hosts. If it’s running on Windows OS, on the other hand, there are Microsoft licensing requirements to consider. You’ll have to go with a host that’s based on Microsoft if you’re hosting ASP.NET, MS SQL, or Microsoft IIS.
Database server, app server, file server, and domain server are among the options available. Have a general idea of your needs, although a different server for individual tasks isn’t always needed. It all depends on site function specifics.
Final Thoughts
Every company site and business has unique capabilities and needs and different budgets to work with. Shared hosting works for smaller sites that are not very data-sensitive but not for sites that can’t risk sharing an IP or will be hosting a high volume of traffic. If you expect you’ll need higher security or more customization moving forward, look no further than dedicated hosting.
