subject: Shared Hosting Vs. Dedicated Web Hosting [print this page] A Brief Introduction A Brief Introduction
Shared hosting / Virtual Hosting
In a shared or Virtual Hosting, the hosting company hosts plenty of online portals in a single server. This means that there may be other websites sharing your server.
Dedicated Web Hosting
In dedicated web hosting, your server is dedicated to your site alone. In other words all your web server space is owned by you alone.
Assessment Criteria
Neighborhood sites
In shared web hosting, if you share your web site with porn sites or spam sites there are chances that search engine may display warning flag for your site also. Sharing with sites that follow black hat methods may lead to blacklisting of your site also.
Server response
File requests are handled by server on first come first serve basis. Thus of you are at the end of the queue, you need to wait for long time for your request to be attended, in case you hold a shared web hosting. In dedicated web hosting there is no such issue.
Traffic effect
Based on the traffic generated by your neighborhood sites, the response time for your site may vary in case of shared hosting. Dedicated hosting doesnt face such problems.
Server Crash
In case of shared web hosting, if the web host writes a poor CGI script, your website may even crash.
Inter dependence
Your sites performance may be affected due to bad performance of the sites sharing your server in case of shared web hosting.
Control
In dedicated web hosting, by writing a good script, you can completely control your sites performance.
Setups
Handling anonymous FTP and maintaining SSL encryption are easily accomplished with dedicated hosting. In case of shared web hosting these processes are quit complicated.
Cost efficiency
The hosting services are comparatively cheap in case of virtual hosting. In case of dedicated hosting these services are costlier.
Bandwidth penalty
The amount of bandwidth per month to your site is limited in shared hosting. Dedicated hosting has no such bandwidth restriction.
