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Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Differences Between Shared HostingAnd Dedicated Hosting

By Janis Reid


A commonly asked question when it comes to a hosting environment is if to opt for a dedicated or a shared setup. Several factors have to be thought about when making these choices, dedicated servers may be complete overkill for many setups, but shared hosting could mean you don't get the amount of resources you need to run your website.

The cost factor of hosting

Possibly the most prominent consideration in choosing business hosting is going to be your pocket. The amount that you can pay for hosting can have huge differences in price for solutions and of course the level of the company. The difference between uk business class hosting and standard shared hosting is massive. Business class webhosting will offer much great support and the reliability of the service will be second to none but does come at a premium. A tight budget is normally used with standard shared hosting. Is your hosting going to be for business or personal use? If it's for business and you can't afford for it to be down, find a business class web host. Is the website a personal website do you really need to pay a premium for it? If not, a shared web host would suffice.

Another consideration to ask yourself is do you require a server or would a shared hosting be OK. Does your website use a lot of resources? Busy websites are often not suited to a normal shared hosting platform. Should your website not get many visitors each day then a dedicated server would be complete waste. With that, dedicated servers attract a higher price tag, where as shared hosting will cost you significantly less.

Managed or unmanaged dedicated servers

Using a managed dedicated server for your web hosting environment is normally the safer and best option. Managed dedicated hosting will mean the server gets looked about by the hosting provider. Management levels vary, but you can choose between just having security updates and patching, right through to having your websites tweaked and taken care of. When you get a managed service, expect the price to rise. Should you be experienced admin then you would probably opt for an unmanaged dedicated server. This is of course a much cheaper option but you are responsible for taking care of the security and updates through to OS issues etc. The hosting company still takes responsibility for network and hardware issues. With a shared hosting package, the server level security will be take care of as with any other server issues. But you still have maintain a secure website your self.

Another option- virtual dedicated servers

This is the other option to look at with virtual dedicated servers. This is looked upon as the middle ground. While you don't have your own dedicated hardware, you will have your own dedicated resources. Of course you'll be separated from other hosting accounts that might cause issues in a shared environment. Virtual dedicated servers being middle of the road options mean the resources you get for the price reflect this and can normally get upgraded with ease.

Finding a shared or dedicated hosting provider

You have now made your decision, you will need to look for a provider to match requirements. Remember to do your research, and test the new provider. Any provider worth its salt should give you confidence in the hosting solution they are offering you.




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