Now, you want to host your fully functional blog or website on the World Wide Web. You will face a challenge in choosing a hosting plan, mostly while deciding on Shared hosting vs. dedicated hosting.
Today, every business venture needs a website. You may be a blogger, a small business owner, an e-commerce giant, or anyone else.
Whatever you own and promote, without a website, it is hard to get a satisfactory target of viewers and customers. With content management tools and templates to ease efforts, anyone can develop their websites today.
After you develop your website, you must host it on an Internet server and provide access to the World Wide Web.
Websites are hosted on servers with unique machine IP addresses linked to human-readable domain names like www.xyz.com.
Do you feel the topic is getting technical?
— Stop worrying because you need not have to work with so many technicalities. Several web hosting service providers are here to handhold you in this journey.
— Raj Softech Solutions provides a customized palette of web hosting services depending on your business needs.
What are the popular hosting plans preferred by businesses these days?
It depends on parameters that vary with your business requirements.
Some popular hosting plans are;
- Shared Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- Application Hosting like WordPress.
Now, let us learn about two popular hosting plans (shared hosting vs dedicated hosting), and then you can choose what will work for your website.
1. What is Shared Hosting?
Imagine you are moving to a new city. You are single, have less money, searching for a job, or have yet to join your new job. Neither can you cook nor afford to eat out. You can’t invest in furniture like a cot, cupboard, etc.
In such a situation, living in a hostel or paying guest (PG) accommodation is your best choice.
You can share a room with other members, have food cooked there, and use common utilities like television, washing machines, washrooms, etc.
Everyone has a cot and cupboard given for their use. All these facilities will come with a reasonable monthly fee.
It is what exactly shared servers do!
Shared web hosting lets you host your website on a server along with several other websites.
Shared hosting plans suit all kinds of businesses that take baby steps in the sea of business. The hosting company handles the server-side security, upgrades, and recoveries seamlessly.
1.1. Advantages of Shared Hosting
For a beginner in any domain, from blogs or portals to high-traffic e-commerce websites – shared hosting works fine.
It gives you the advantage of running a full-fledged website at a minimal cost. Like staying in a PG, the host resolves common issues. The website owner will never be informed of any server-side technical faults.
Easy for Beginners;
— New business owners or bloggers with no technical expertise can choose a shared server. With a user-friendly control panel, you can view all traffic statistics and set up emails, databases, add-on domains, etc.
Affordable;
— Buying a shared web hosting does not burn your pocket, and it is way too affordable. Hosting a website on a shared server is cost-effective. Since several other websites share the server costs, what you will be paying is very minimal.
Professional Management and Growth;
— When your website traffic grows – you may want to acquire more resources from your shared server. It offers easy upgrades and migration to accommodate your growing needs. Such user requests are handled by support professionals to offer you a quality experience.
Suitable for Multiple Domains;
— Shared hosting allows you to host multiple domains in your hosting account. You can connect all your domains to your root directory to host several domains covered under one hosting plan.
What Do We Offer?
- At Raj Softech Solutions, we have thoughtfully curated shared hosting plans for every business website.
- Our plans start from Rs. 89 – Rs. 369 per month. A control panel, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, SSL security, and 99.99% uptime guarantees are our highlights across our packages.
- We use Linux-powered LiteSpeed servers. Thanks to its versatile nature – it offers support for all kinds of websites without issues. They offer support to websites developed by any popular CMS tool.
1.2. Disadvantages of Shared Hosting
Like how one would face problems in a PG setup, similar problems arise in shared hosting.
Websites of different businesses contend for common server resources that require the hosting company’s attention.
If a single roommate is irresponsible, it will create unnecessary trouble for other PG mates. If you start a family, your room won’t be sufficient.
Also, it’s crucial to know common misconceptions about shared web hosting as the same analogy applies here.
Compromise of Security;
— It has very little to do with the hosting server. Host servers are very robust while load balancing among multiple websites. However, shared server security is a big question and can harm your website anytime when hacking is attempted on your neighbor’s website. Such situations are rare, thanks to robust firewalls and server security algorithms.
Resource Sharing and Speed;
— Shared web hosting servers try to accommodate many websites – to not waste their resources. It will sometimes make websites contend for shared resources like RAM, CPU, etc.
— For example, say one of the shared websites suddenly gets popular. Huge traffic to that website can affect network speed in other websites and slow down everything. It may not be huge for you if you have a blogging website or something simple site. However, losing traffic can affect your business.
Difficult to Scale up;
— When your website gets sudden traffic, it needs more memory and network. Also, in shared hosting, you will not get root access to the server. Therefore, it is difficult to scale up instantly, and when required, you need to raise a ticket with the hosting company. While some hosts handle this swiftly, some others may penalize you for their server failures.
How Do We Help?
- With Raj Softech Solutions, your websites get hosted in super fast servers protected by redundant firewalls and data backups.
- Hosting issues are resolved by a 24/7 customer support team through phone chat or tickets.
- Our ultra-fast servers offer scaling up and high performance on various traffic loads.
- Website load time within 3 seconds never gets compromised.
- We offer free migration and setup with our shared servers, and your website will be up in less time.
2. What is Dedicated Hosting?
Imagine you are a family of 4 with two children moving to a new city. You are earning a 5-digit salary. Your spouse can cook and prefer to eat out sometimes. Also, you plan to buy things like a kid’s cot, an air conditioner, etc., for your new home.
In such a situation, a PG will never suit your requirements. Your best bet will be renting an apartment or an individual house near schools, shops, offices, eateries, etc.
It is exactly what dedicated servers do!
A dedicated server is a single web server that caters exclusively to a client. Your website gets full access to resources like CPU, RAM, disk space, and network bandwidth.
Like living in an independent house, you choose when, how, and what you want from the server.
You are the admin selecting your preferred hardware resources, operating system, and software applications. All disadvantages discussed in shared hosting will never occur with a dedicated server.
2.1. Advantages of Dedicated Hosting
This exclusive hosting in a dedicated server works best for websites with high traffic, e-commerce operations, high-level security, and customizable resources.
Dedicated hosting ensures no compromise on website downtime. This way, your website traffic never goes down.
High Performance
— Due to exclusive access to server resources, page load times are faster. It gives a better overall performance. Optimal use of server OS and applications enhances various functionalities handled on your website.
Exclusive server resources
— Server resources like CPU, RAM, and disk space can be used without sharing. If your website traffic increases, you can scale up your resources by adding more RAM and storage. Scalability is an important feature in dedicated hosting.
Increased Security
— Since there are no other external shared websites on your server, there will not be any problems with spreading malware or spam websites.
— It makes your website robust and secure, highly suitable to be open for huge and critical traffic. In addition to OS or network-level security, you may add additional security algorithms to power your website.
High-level control
— When hosting your website on a dedicated server, you get administrative access to handle server resources. Scaling up resources, security threats management, upgrades, etc., can be handled without third-party interventions and approvals.
What Do We Offer?
- Raj Softech Solutions offers dedicated server plans from Rs. 9999 – Rs. 31999 per month.
- DELL/HP servers, Cisco routers and switches, Intel Processors, and SSD drives are some high-level components of our servers with Root (admin) access.
- From standard servers to dual processors – choose what suits you and your budget.
2.2. Disadvantages of Dedicated Hosting
Staying in an individual home is convenient, but you have to manage a lot of work. From packing and moving to setting up your new home, purchases, maintenance, and reworks require effort and time.
It is no doubt that dedicated hosting servers offer the best QoS (Quality of Service) in terms of network traffic. So, if you have the requirement for handling critical web traffic, you can consider dedicated hosting.
Costly
— While a dedicated server offers an all-you-can-have platter, it comes with associated high costs. These include the price of using the latest hardware and software versions, maintenance, and upgrades. Unlike shared hosting, expenses can get very high here.
Requires technical expertise
— Since you own the server and its hardware, you need some basic technical knowledge to handle it. You must have a knowledge of OS version upgrades, hardware features, finding failure problems, and recovery. Any delay in rectifying faults can cost you your website traffic.
How Can We Help?
- Raj Softech Solutions offers you various dedicated server packages (that are budget-friendly) for your hosting needs.
- We use high-quality Dell PowerEdge servers with powerful Intel processors offering customized configurations.
- To increase security, we have installed an anti-DDOS security feature on all layers of your network.
- Our dedicated servers are installed on Tier-4 data centers in the USA and UK. It makes your website available 24/7 with high speed and performance.
- Our 24/7 client support team can provide solutions for all kinds of technical assistance. Our expert team can handle any bug fixes or crashes in no time.
3. How to Choose the Right Hosting – Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting?
Now, we know the key differences between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Let us see how to decide what you will need for your blog or business website.
Let us assume you are starting a beauty blog. You create posts frequently on using products from your kitchen for your daily self-care rituals. Your blog gets good target viewers.
You soon start posting YouTube videos on your blog and get more traffic.
Then viewers want you to sell your beauty recipes to help them benefit. So, you add a product catalog for customers to shop and pay through a payment portal.
You soon partner with some beauty brands in line with your healthy beauty goals. Soon, your beauty blog has transformed into a beauty and health-conscious e-commerce website.
At each stage of your website’s growth, from inception to high traffic, you have to choose your plans accordingly.
If you are a blogger or a new business owner, shared web hosting can handle your website needs. Sometimes, even you can host your beginner-level e-commerce websites on a shared server. But once your traffic peaks and stays high, it may be time to move to a VPS or dedicated host.
A dedicated server is excellent for;
- High-traffic websites and web apps
- Payment gateways and financial websites
- Websites handling confidential data, like banks
- Big data processing and machine learning
- Dedicated game server hosting
- Online media streaming
Let us analyze how you choose some critical factors while hosting your website.
3.1. Dedicated Server Offers Superior Speed than Shared Server
Any website user experience requires fast loading. Both shared and dedicated hosting servers provide this guarantee. But speed requirements depend on your website’s loading requirements.
The more functionalities and components in your website, the more time it may take to load your complete website features.
No matter the website’s complexity, your website must load within 3 seconds to prevent the user from going away from you.
If you have a simple website like a blog, catalog, journal, or local e-commerce website, a shared hosting server can meet your speed requirements without any compromise.
Resource jamming by any other traffic-blocking neighbor in the shared server won’t affect your website speed.
A dedicated server with high-end resources will meet your speed standards. Users can navigate between your pages within fractions of a seconds.
Dedicated servers can download with speeds up to 1Gbps and shared servers can load websites within a few hundred milliseconds.
3.2. The performance of a Dedicated Server is higher than a Shared Server
Your viewers will never know whether your website operates in a shared setup or on a dedicated server. Any glitches in the performance of your website will show that you are operating on an insecure server environment.
You may handle any technical glitches by compensating through other means.
- Suppose, your website goes down suddenly, you can have a WhatsApp or Facebook group to update your target clients.
On the other hand, having a wider audience with an online e-commerce website like Flipkart will mean you need a dedicated server.
— It is not possible to alert everyone about server glitches, as a huge chunk of them can move to a competitor within seconds!
Even during rare resource failures, your website will be up in no time.
3.3. Dedicated Server had more Bandwidth than Shared Hosting
It refers to the volume of data uploaded to and downloaded from the server in a month. Bandwidth is measured in GB or TB. Bandwidth plans are metered in both shared and dedicated hosting.
Before hosting your website, use network monitoring tools like Wireshark, Nagios, etc., to calculate how much data it takes to load your website.
If your website has online media streaming involved, then you must go for a dedicated server with many TBs of bandwidth. It can accommodate high-traffic websites easily.
If your medium-traffic website is on a shared server but can grow within short periods, you must request your hosting provider to scale up your existing bandwidth.
When choosing a metered bandwidth plan, be careful to keep in mind unexpected spikes in network traffic. It can happen when your website gets a sudden surge in traffic.
For basic websites on a shared server, like a blog, 10GB metered bandwidth would be sufficient to start. Dedicated servers can offer metered bandwidth plans up to 30 TB.
3.4. You can Set Your Security Firewalls on a Dedicated Server
Dedicated servers are fool-proof in terms of website security thanks to exclusive resource access and network bandwidth in the server.
Shared servers themselves are secure and problems arise due to ‘bad neighbors’ spreading malware to other websites.
1. Shared servers provide basic security features like firewalls, SSL certificates, periodic backups, etc.
If these are sufficient for your website, you can be content with shared hosting.
2. A dedicated server is necessary when your business website processes visitor’s data. You are the root user and can set your own firewall rule and install security software to protect the visitor’s data.
If security is your topmost priority and any attack can damage your reputation forever, go for a dedicated server.
3.5. Dedicated Server’s are Highly Scalable
A website keeps growing organically or through other means of traffic. Organic website traffic grows gradually, with sudden spikes at specific times.
A scalable server caters to your growing resource and network demands seamlessly.
Scalability is easier in a dedicated server as you will be the admin or owner. As and when your traffic spikes you can get more network bandwidth, disk space, CPU, etc.
In a shared host, getting more resources takes some effort. It requires intervention from the hosting company.
If using a shared host, choose a hosting company with 24/7 availability to handle your scaling needs.
3.6. The cost of a Dedicated Server is always Higher
Shared hosting servers can be rented out for as low as Rs. 89 per month. Dedicated servers start from around Rs. 10,000 per month.
Why are dedicated servers so costly?
It is mainly because of exclusive access to a high-end dedicated server with ultra-fast processors, high-storage SSDs, and secure and unlimited network bandwidth. Your website will own all server hardware resources to operate at high speed.
In a shared server, your website will share existing server hardware. Server resources are optimally shared between various websites residing on the same server.
The web hosting company has different hosting packages to choose from based on our requirements. The more functionalities your website handles, go for the higher the shared server package.
3.7. Dedicated Server has Better Customization
To change server settings, permissions, and sharing options, you will need root/admin access to the server.
Shared hosting offers limited or no control over server resources. You will face problems like the ‘website not available’ error when it receives sudden heavy traffic. Such cases require intervention by your host provider.
With a dedicated host, you get full access to allocate server resources for your website. With good technical expertise, you can manage and maintain your server without any dependence.
Conclusion – Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting
Both hosting services come with a good platter of benefits for your website.
Shared hosting gives you a part of the server hardware and network resources. Sharing always comes with problems. Security, quality, and response times are drawbacks in using shared servers for high-traffic, hacker-prone websites.
Dedicated hosting gives you exclusive server and network resource access. You can customize your hardware, software, OS, and every other aspect of your server to suit your website.
Most new bloggers or small business owners prefer shared hosting before testing deeper waters. It helps them understand their website traffic and scale accordingly.
If you believe that your website is going to handle a huge traffic at the beginning, go for a dedicated server. Handling large traffic, processing user’s data, and wanting more security needs a dedicated hosting server.
At Raj Softech Solutions, we provide 100% client satisfaction giving you the best hosting plans.
With a plan for every budget and scaling option, we always strive to keep your website online without glitches.
