We know web hosting is basically an infrastructure that puts your website on the internet. There will be resources such as computers and servers that are required and not everyone has all of these resources or the technical know-how, and that is why you need a web hosting service provider, which will allocate space for your website on the server and the people then simply need to enter your website address or domain in their browsers and the system will connect to your server and webpages gets displayed to them on their screens.
So, of course, there are different types of web hosting service providers with different server size, speeds, and reliability. The different types of hosting options available are Shared hosting, VPS hosting Dedicated hosting, etc. Today we will cover two of the popular hosting types – Shared and Dedicated to help you understand their features and when is the right time to shift to the Dedicated Server.
Shared Hosting: In Shared hosting, multiple websites are hosted on a single server. It is the most inexpensive hosting option to consider for small businesses or start-ups as you share the resources with other users. It is also usually compared to public transport system as hundreds of users are sharing a single platform in this case a single server and the cost gets divided amongst all users.
If you’re just starting your business, it is recommended that you choose Shared Hosting, however, with time your website would grow and so would the traffic. At such a time, it is crucial to switch your hosting type so that your website doesn’t slow down and offer a poor user experience to your customers.
There are several web hosting types you can choose from; however, Dedicated Server can be a smart choice in the long run. Let us understand, what a Dedicated Server is.
Dedicated Server: In complete contrast to Shared hosting, under Dedicated Server only your website is hosted on the server, no one shares it, the server is exclusively dedicated to you. Hence, metaphorically if Shared hosting is public transport, then Dedicated Server is your personal car.
Now, that you’ve zeroed down on the hosting type you should switch, you also need to ascertain if you need the hosting to be Managed or can you Self-Manage it.
- Managed Hosting: A Managed Server is a hosting type that provides all services to the clients. All the server issues, monitoring, management, maintenance of the client’s server, and more are handled by your hosting provider
- Self-Managed Hosting: Self-Managed Hosting is where you get the same services as Managed hosting except that you handle all the tasks of maintaining and monitoring the servers
Shared hosting is the most sought-after choice when starting a business, and if you plan to grow ahead, you will reach a point wherein you will have to upgrade to a dedicated managed server when your business grows.
Following are some of the indicators to consider making your move to a dedicated managed server:
- Increased traffic: When your business becomes popular and grows, a lot of people start visiting your website, if your website can’t handle the load and experiences downtime frequently then it is time to upgrade to a Dedicated Server.
- Speed: If your visitors start facing issues of low speeds and web pages taking a long time to open, then it is a suitable time to make the move to a dedicated server which will solve this issue and benefit your website visitors.
- Storage capacity: With shared hosting, you only get a limited amount of storage capacity and if over time you add more pages to your website, the shared hosting server will not be able to accommodate your new pages and you will have to go for the dedicated server.
- Security: Shared hosting’s security is adequate for small businesses, if other websites on the server get hacked it is a big threat to your website as well. And you should never consider shared hosting if your business involves confidential information.
- Server control: If you wish to have complete control of all the resources and servers, the dedicated managed server is the best option to go for. All the resources remain with you and are managed by a dedicated hosting team.
Switch for Enhanced Experience
The performance of your website depends on several factors, but largely on your web hosting. Running your website on a web hosting that lacks server space can compromise your website’s loading speed and in turn, customer’s user experience, prompting them to not return to your site. At a time like this, switching your website hosting plan to a Dedicated Server is the ideal choice.
We at Bluehost offer Dedicated Server. Moreover, our Dedicated Server also comes with a Managed Services add-on wherein a team of experts would manage everything for your website while you can concentrate on running and growing your business.
So, what are you waiting for? Switch today for a hassle-free website experience!
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop them below. For more, visit our Web Hosting Category page.
