One of the first decisions you will need to make when establishing a web presence is choosing a hosting a plan. Web hosting has become a commodity, but that doesn’t mean that all web hosts are created equal. There are many plans at many different price points. Reliability is a huge differentiator between providers. Over the course of the next week, we’re going to touch upon the many different factors to consider when choosing a web host. Our first post will examine the basic differences between shared and dedicated hosting.
Shared vs. Dedicated Hosting
The first question you need to ask yourself when looking for a web host is whether or not you need a shared or dedicated server. The difference between shared and dedicated hosting is not unlike the difference between renting an apartment and owning a home. When you rent an apartment, you are renting a unit in a larger building that holds many dwellings. While this is cost effective, it also poses problems. Just like in an apartment setting, you are affected by the actions of your neighbors. For instance, say your neighbor in the adjoining apartment forgets to turn off the stove when he leaves for work, and his apartment catches fire, setting the entire building ablaze. Most likely, your apartment and belongings are going to be affected. With shared web hosting, the server is divided between many clients, just like an apartment building. If one of your server neighbor’s web sites gets flooded with a denial of service attack, your site will most likely be affected as well. If you are hosting an application that can’t afford to have down time, a shared hosting plan starts looking more and more like a recipe for disaster.
Dedicated hosting plans cost much more than shared hosting plans. However, you can have piece of mind that you are the only client on that server, freeing you from scenarios like the one described above.
There is a third type of hosting plan – Virtual Private Servers. These plans are a hybrid of the shared/dedicated. How does that work? Well, technically with a Virtual Private Server you are being hosted on hardware that is serving multiple customers. However, with Virtual Private Servers your server instance is running in a virtual machine. This allows you total control over your server instance, much like what you would get with a dedicated server. However, since the hardware is still host to multiple websites, there can still be performance issues. But thanks to the power of virtualization, these performance issues are greatly minimized in comparison to the performance issues of a shared server.
If your website generates revenue, you are gambling with your business when you opt for a shared hosting plan. Downtime can be a reputation killer for any e-commerce venture. Especially one that is trying to establish credibility and build a customer base.
Additionally, if all you have is a brochure ware site that serves as an electronic billboard for your company, dedicated hosting is going to be over kill. Obviously, if you have the money to afford a dedicated hosting plan, you will benefit from the reliability of dedicated hardware.
In our next post on web hosting, we’ll look at server platforms, and the choice between Windows & Linux servers.
