In Part I, we looked at some of the broad issues that you need to consider when choosing between shared and dedicated web hosting. In Part II, we analysed shared web hosting in a little more detail. Today, we will look at the pros and cons of dedicated web hosting.

Dedicated web hosting

Whereas with shared web hosting you are effectively sharing a server with other businesses, with dedicated web hosting you have sole use of a server.

(Higher) cost

Compared with shared web hosting, the cost of dedicated web hosting can be significantly more. Typically, for a reasonably powerful server, you can expect to pay around £150 per month.

While this is significantly more than the cost of a typical shared hosting package, you do get some notable benefits as outlined below.

Unique IP

With shared hosting, bad behaviour (such as spamming) from one domain name can affect other domains on the same server as they all share the same IP. Clearly, with your own dedicated server, you need not worry about the actions of others.

Speed / responsiveness

A dedicated server will certainly be more responsive as it deals with requests for your website only. If you expect a lot of traffic, then dedicated web hosting should be a serious consideration.

Bandwidth and storage

While bandwidth should be unlimited, storage space would be determined by the specification of your server – the higher the spec, greater the amount of storage space.

SSL

Whether you are selling online or capturing customer data, SSL is a must and for a dedicated server, this should part of the package.

I hope our three-part guide to shared / dedicated hosting has given you adequate understanding to at least pose the right questions to your web host.

Finally, whether you opt for shared or dedicated hosting, always look for full support. You never know when you might need it.

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In our previous blog, we looked at some of the broad issues that you need to consider when deciding whether to opt for shared or dedicated web hosting. Today, we’ll look at some of the specific advantages and disadvantages of these two options.

Shared web hosting

Low cost

Shared web hosting is cheap – certainly, most UK web hosting companies offer packages from as little as £2/month including a free domain name and support.

Purchase-to-launch speed

If you have a ready website, shared hosting will allow you to launch it within minutes. Simply visit a web hosting provider’s website, choose and pay for a package and pretty much instantly you’ll receive your FTP login details allowing you to upload and launch your website immediately.

Shared IP

Every server connected to the Web has a unique IP address – a unique identity if you like.  This means that if there are a number of websites co-hosted on a server, they will all have the same IP address. Generally, this is not a problem.

However, if a co-hosted website was to persistently send out spam, the whole server could be blacklisted and effectively disabled taking your and all other co-hosted websites offline.

This is where you need to satisfy yourself that your web hosting company doesn’t host potentially spamming sites and also has robust monitoring software and procedures to ensure that any abusive activity is prevented before it impacts your website.

Speed / responsiveness

The more websites that are hosted on a server, the more requests that server has to deal with. Let’s say there are 20 websites hosted on a single server. If all those are currently being viewed by users, all requests for pages from those websites effectively have to queue up and be fulfilled in turn.

Now in reality, for small businesses with limited traffic (thousands of visitors per day) there is no noticeable change in performance. However, if many of these co-hosted websites were attracting tens-of-thousands of visitors per day, then it may well take a few extra second to load website pages. It is then perfectly possible that your customers will not wait around for pages of your website to load and may click away to your competitors.

Bandwidth and storage

While both of these elements will have set limits under shared hosting, most web hosting companies will allow you to increase these or upgrade to a higher package as your needs change.

Certainly, neither bandwidth nor storage hinder website performance. If you reach the limits of your package your web hosting company should automatically inform you and give you the opportunity to either reduce your usage / storage or simply upgrade.

SSL

Whether you have an ecommerce website or you simply capture customer details through your website, you will need to ensure that any information entered by your customers is encrypted. For this you will need SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption. It keeps data secure and also inspires confidence in your customers.

For shared hosting, a shared SSL encryption seems to the most common solution. In most cases, this is perfectly fine.

However, individual SSL encryption on shared servers can pose set-up challenges. It is, therefore, best to discuss this with your web hosting company to ensure that your needs can be fully met.

In summary, for the vast majority of small business websites including those with significant traffic, shared hosting is a perfect solution. It is certainly the right choice to start with and upgrade as your needs change. Eventually, you may well need to consider dedicated hosting.

In Part III, we will take a look at dedicated hosting in a little more detail.

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For many businesses, their website is the single most important point of contact with their current and future customers. And for most small businesses the responsibility of ensuring that their website is always up and available rests in the hands of their web hosting company.

In other words, whether or not your latest promotion is seen by your customers and prospects may be determined by the quality of service provided by your web hosting company.

Equally importantly, the type of hosting you choose may also determine the smooth running and responsiveness of your website.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of web hosting options – shared or dedicated.

Put simply, shared hosting is where your web hosting company hosts your website together with many others websites on a single server. Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, is where only your website sits on an individual server.

While both options have their respective advantages and disadvantages, for most small businesses, shared hosting is a perfectly good choice.

However, before you go ahead and buy shared hosting, you will need to ask your web hosting company a number of questions. How many other websites are likely to be hosted on the server? What happens in the event that you exceed your bandwidth or storage space? What sort of control measures are in place to stop your co-hosted websites from spamming and potentially getting the server blacklisted?

Of course, you may also want to consider where your web host is based. Certainly, for many UK businesses, a UK web hosting company is critical as they want to be confident of getting help as and when they need it.

Now, given the ever-improving nature of hardware and software, shared hosting will meet the demands of most small businesses and it is highly unlikely that you will see disruption to your service. As long as you can satisfy yourself with the support on offer from your web hosting company, we are confident that shared hosting option will prove to be both an effective and a profitable choice.

In the next blog, we will look at shared and dedicated hosting in a little more detail to help you make a more informed decision about your hosting package and your web hosting company.

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