Hosting Plans Compared: Shared vs Dedicated

Choosing a website hosting plan is a big decision. There are many options and benefits that web hosting companies offer users in order for them to choose their hosting service. Many companies offer “unlimited” perks such as bandwidth and storage when that is not the case at all.

One of the options you will have when choosing your hosting plan is the option for Shared Hosting or a Dedicated hosting plan. So whats the difference? What should you choose? There are benefits of going with either of them so lets talk about them!

Shared Web Hosting

Shared hosting is a immensely popular choice among people who are out searching for a web hosting plan. One the major reason people go with Shared Web hosting is because of the cost. Shared hosting is the most affordable hosting out there. Plans can vary from $2.99 to $12.95 a month. Sounds like an unbelievable deal right?

There is no denying that it is indeed a great deal, but with going with a cheaper plan there are some drawbacks. If you have ever used a public internet connection you know it becomes slower and slower as more people start using it. This is the same concept as shared hosting. Along with your website many other people’s are also being hosted on the same server hence the name “shared”

Why can this be a bad thing? Here are some of the problems:

Slow Server Response Time

Site load time is a common problem with shared hosting. If another user sharing your server has constant heavy traffic daily, it will use more of the servers resources cause to slow the server time. Making load times slower for your potential customers, and the last thing you want is people leaving your site before it even loads.

Frequent Site Crashes

There can be many different reasons why your site could be crashing. It could be bad scripts or web traffic that overload the server’s resources causing it shut down. When choosing shared web hosting it is important to make you go with a company that constantly monitors the server’s usage.

Dedicated Web Hosting

What makes people spend some extra cash for Dedicated web hosting? With a dedicated hosting plan you are the only one who has access to the storage and resources available. This is by far the best option for businesses.

Why is dedicated hosting a better option?

More Secure

Dedicated servers provide its own firewall proving more security compared to shared hosting. Dedicated servers are less vulnerable to attacks by hackers. Dedicated servers also also allow you create backups of your files incase anything bad would happen.

Better Performance

Since you are the alone the response time of the server are much faster compared to shared hosting. Visitors will get a much better experience when coming to your site as everything loads much faster.

Wrap it up

To summarize if you are in the need personal hosting, have a small business that site does not get a lot of traffic or just want a cheap plan shared hosting is great for you.

However if you want the best performance, minimal downtime and can afford the extra cost dedicated hosting is well worth the additional money.