Shared hosting versus dedicated hosting: which plan should I choose?
Choosing the right hosting package is crucial for the proper performance of your website. When reviewing website hosting packages, everything can seem a little overwhelming.
There are several packages with lots of features and a plethora of pricing options. How do you know which one suits you and your website best? Today let’s take a look at the differences between shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting vs. dedicated hosting: overview
Shared hosting is one of the most common hosting packages. With shared hosting, thousands of websites are stored and hosted on one server.
Shared hosting is similar to renting and living in an apartment. The facilities of the apartment complex are shared with everyone. When you sign an apartment contract, you agree to share the courtyard, playground, parking and swimming pool. This is the same for shared hosting. All users share the available resources with each ‘neighbor’. Each ‘neighbor’ has an assigned amount of resources that he or she can use. With shared hosting, these facilities are CPU usage, memory and disk space.
Dedicated hosting differs from shared hosting in that none of the resources are shared. All resources and server disk space are your property. Dedicated hosting is similar to owning a house. You don’t have to worry about sharing your driveway, backyard or private pool.
Similarly, with dedicated hosting, nothing is shared and all resources are dedicated to your website. This gives you the power and flexibility to configure your server, install custom software, and manage the overall resources for your website.
Dedicated hosting requires you to complete all maintenance and updates for your server.
Shared hosting vs. dedicated hosting: what’s the difference?
The basic difference between shared and dedicated hosting lies in the way server resources are allocated. With shared hosting, multiple websites coexist on a single server, sharing all available resources, including processing power, memory and storage – similar to living in an apartment building with shared facilities. With dedicated hosting, a website gets an entire server exclusively for itself, with full control over all resources – analogous to owning a private home.
1. Resource allocation and performance
When you use shared hosting, your website must compete with countless other sites for server resources, which can lead to the ‘bad neighbor effect’, where one site’s heavy use of resources impacts others on the same server.
In contrast, dedicated hosting provides exclusive access to all server resources, ensuring consistent performance and faster loading times regardless of the activities of other websites. This makes it particularly valuable for high-traffic websites or websites that require significant processing power.
2. Security and risk management
Security considerations differ significantly between these hosting types. Shared hosting environments face higher security risks due to the fact that multiple websites are running on the same server. If one website is hacked, it could potentially affect other websites sharing the same space.
Dedicated hosting offers superior security because you have full control over the server environment and do not share space with potentially vulnerable websites. The isolation makes dedicated hosting particularly suitable for companies that process sensitive data or require specific security protocols.
3. Cost structure and management
The cost difference between these hosting types is significant. Shared hosting typically ranges from $1 to $20 per month, making it an economical choice for small businesses and startups. However, dedicated hosting can cost anywhere from $60 to $350 per month, which reflects exclusive access to resources and enhanced capabilities.
In addition to the base cost, dedicated hosting often requires additional technical expertise or the cost of hiring server administrators, while shared hosting includes managed services within the base price.
4. Customization and control
The level of control varies dramatically between these hosting types. Shared hosting offers limited customization options, as changes can affect other websites on the server. Users typically interact via a simplified control panel with pre-installed applications.
Dedicated hosting provides full root access and complete control over server configuration, allowing custom software installation, specific security protocols and detailed performance optimization. This makes dedicated hosting ideal for businesses with unique technical requirements or specialized software needs.
5. Scalability and growth
Scalability options differ significantly between the two hosting types. Shared hosting has inherent limitations on resource expansion due to the shared environment, which may limit website growth.
Dedicated hosting offers superior scalability, allowing businesses to adjust resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage as needed without affecting or being affected by other websites. This makes dedicated hosting more suitable for businesses that expect significant growth or require flexible resource allocation.
What are the benefits of shared hosting?
Because it is the most common form of hosting, shared hosting is also the most affordable. Unlimited disk space is another advantage. This means that when your website starts to grow, you don’t have to worry about overfilling your account.
If you get minimal traffic on your website, or your website doesn’t require many resources, shared hosting is a perfect option. Because resources are shared, smaller websites that don’t use as many resources can run efficiently.
Shared hosting generally comes with an easy-to-use dashboard where you can configure your account settings, as well as install content management systems and configure domain settings.
You don’t have to worry about updating hardware or performing maintenance updates. All maintenance and updates are handled by your hosting provider, giving you more time to focus on the content.
Finally, you can get started quickly with shared hosting, so visitors can view your website within hours of launch.
What are the benefits of dedicated hosting?
Dedicated hosting has its own benefits, including the fact that it offers super-fast loading times even when there is a lot of traffic. Since the resources are not shared, your website gets 100% of the processing power. This ensures optimal performance and helps with Google rankings and SEO.
Dedicated hosting gives you the key to the front door for the entire server. This is called root access. With root access you have full control over your server. With this control and flexibility you can ensure that your website and server are completely secure and that all processes are running. You can also manage your server with root access via the command line.
With room for growth and scalability, dedicated hosting has increased reliability. This gives you peace of mind knowing that your website is on the best possible hosting package.
Finally, most dedicated servers are DDoS protected, which not only keeps the server safe, but also keeps your website live.
What are the disadvantages of shared hosting?
The limitations of resource sharing are a clear disadvantage of shared hosting. With the ability to host thousands of websites on one server, shared hosting servers limit the amount of resources you can use. This will slow down the overall speed of your website. If you suddenly receive a spike in traffic, your website may be slow or downtime due to limited resources.
Another disadvantage of shared hosting is security. Because thousands of websites are hosted on one server, it is generally not possible for the hosting company to perform security updates on every website. That said, some hosting companies guarantee server security by imposing requirements that force certain updates to be performed.
Unfortunately, you cannot apply server customization to shared hosting. Server customization can affect other websites on the server in several ways. This means that with shared hosting you are obliged to use the standard server configuration.
What are the disadvantages of dedicated hosting?
Since dedicated hosting has advanced features, the price is higher compared to shared hosting. It is one of the most expensive hosting methods on the market. All additional features come at a cost, but it’s well worth it for those who need full control and customization over their hosting.
You can do a lot of powerful things with dedicated hosting, install a new operating system, fine-tune your firewall or whatever you want, but that requires a lot of knowledge and expertise.
If that’s you, great, go for it. But if you’re not technical, don’t be put off. Buy a managed hosting account and the provider will take care of the most technical stuff for you, and it can be almost as easy as managing a shared hosting plan (you can spend all your time managing your site in WordPress).
The bottom line: flexibility versus convenience
Both types of hosting have their pros and cons and it really comes down to your preference and priorities that will help you choose the right plan for you.
While not exactly static, shared hosting lacks the flexibility you get with dedicated hosting: you can personalize everything from the server’s operating system to adjusting the amount of resources you have at your disposal.
Scalability is another factor that tips the balance in favor of dedicated hosting. Again, while you can change the amount of certain resources with shared hosting, there is literally no end to the amount of customization with a dedicated host.
The third important aspect that works in favor of dedicated hosting is security. Again, this doesn’t mean that you don’t get security benefits with shared hosting, but they are not as extensive and complete as in the case of dedicated hosting.
The one area where shared hosting clearly outperforms dedicated hosting is cost. There is a significant price difference between the two types of hosting plans, putting dedicated hosting out of the reach of various types of small-scale deployments. It’s no surprise that virtually all beginners decide to trade the benefits of dedicated hosting for the convenience of shared hosting.
Conclusion
Choosing a hosting package for your website is an important decision. With the right package, your website can perform at the optimal speed and performance.
Shared hosting is the least expensive option and is known to be the easiest to get started with. It is generally the perfect hosting package for smaller websites.
Dedicated hosting brings a lot of power and flexibility, but it also comes with responsibility. It’s not the right hosting package for every website, but it’s worth it for those who need complete control.
The requirements of your website, your technical knowledge and your budget are the important factors when choosing between shared hosting and dedicated hosting.