Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting

Optionsopen to a person wishing to promote products, services, or overall business online is either going for dedicated hosting or shared hosting. Usually, these are the two forms of web hosting available in the market. Decision of the end user however will depend on a number of factors. It would be helpful understanding the nature of the two types first of all.

Dedicated HostingIn dedicated hosting, the user is allowed to use entire server and have complete control over the features of the server as well as on all the tools and applications associated with it. At the same time the resources and IP address are always unique. While this type of hosting is very efficient, flexible, and secure, they are also expensive.Shared Web HostingMultiple sites are hosted simultaneously on the same server in shared web hosting. Resources are distributed and allocated among the websites using the server. Once allocated, they remain domain of those sites exclusively. Loss of some amount of efficiency, flexibility, and a little security is compensated by its inexpensive nature. Reasons for the inexpensive nature of shared web hosting are that the operating costs are shared between multiple users.Resource SharingMain feature of the shared hosting is that the users not only share the server but also all related resources including the disk space, IP address as well as the bandwidth. One of the problems of shared hosting is that the used of limited bandwidth may often affect the traffic movement to the site.Risk ComponentsA few risks are also associated with the shared hosting process. Poorly programmed scripts by one of the users can affect the entire server and thereby the sites of other users as well. In worst cases the site could even become unavailable at times. Similarly, if one of the sharers is refused by the search engines, it may affect all other sharers since they are using the same IP address. One bad guy can spoil the entire show and the money and effort put in the website could go all waste.The SelectionWhile dedicated servers are safer and more secure providing all the resources to the end user exclusively, they are also expensive and therefore may not be as suitable as the shared hosting for the small and marginal entrepreneurs. However, if the enterprise is large and website is complex, the dedicated web hosting could be the only option.