When we start a website the first crucial decision afterselecting our domain name is to select the right web Hosting plan for your website which fulfills all your requirements and meets your budget. More than 80% of the websites are hosted either on shared hosting or dedicated hosting though shared web hosting and dedicated web hosting both serve the same purpose i.e. (to publish your website live on the internet) there are significant differences between the two. Therefore in this article “shared hosting vs dedicated hosting” we will discuss the differences between the two and which web hosting you should select for your online business which meets all your requirements. To start with let's understand what is shared and dedicated web hosting.

How to select a web hosting plan?What web hosting and types of web hosting

What is shared hosting?

As the name suggests in shared web hosting many websites are hosted on a single server, therefore the cost of buying a shared hosting plan is much cheaper as compared to other hosting plans because the costs are divided among different websites. In shared hosting, all the resources of that server i.e storage space, bandwidth, FTP accounts, email accounts, database, are distributed among websites using that server. Though it seems that shared hosting is cheaper to buy as compared to other web hosting plans but there are many drawbacks which you will face while using shared web hosting.

Let's take a look at pros and cons of using shared web hosting.

Pros of shared hosting

Very economical to buy as the cost of the server is divided between other websites, so you only have to pay your part and in return, you can use the server to host your website.The maintenance of shared server and the administration is managed by your hosting provider so in that case, you don’t have to concern regarding the technical issues of the server.With the availability of C panel, you can easily manage and customize your website without having much of technical knowledge.With shared web hosting you get MYSQL and PHP support.Inspite of having multiple websites hosted on the same server, you can easily get an up-time guarantee of 99.9%with a reliable web host.

Cons of shared hosting

The major drawback of shared hosting is the security issue, the chances of security breach increases as multiple websites share the same server.Limited resources are another drawback of using shared hosting as, you will not able to know who are the other websites which are sharing the same server with you, the amount of traffic they generate, the size of their websites and how much resources they are using from the shared server you are totally unaware of that.With shared hosting, you may face an issue with your website loading speed, many websites which are using shared web hosting plan had a complaint about slow loading of their websites. However, web hosts are working continuously working for the improvement of loading speed.Customer support may not be that good as compared to dedicated web hosting while using shared web hosting.

What is dedicated hosting?

In dedicated web hosting a single server is used to host a single website. Usually, dedicated hosting is preferred by big companies or an online store which has a huge amount of traffic on their website. Along with that you as the owner of dedicated hosting can modify your hosting preferences according to your website traffic or according to your application needs, you can access your server and can customize it according to your requirement any time dedicated hosting gives you maximum control over the server software and the services it uses.

Dedicate hosting is the most powerful web hosting used which can easily handle almost any website. Though it seems that dedicated hosting is very much reliable as compared to other web hosting plans but there are many pros and cons of using dedicated web hosting.

Let's take a look at pros and cons of using dedicated web hosting.

Pros of dedicated web hosting

No server sharing with other websites as in shared web hosting, a single server is in complete control of single owner he can modify, customize his server according to his need to take maximum advantage.With dedicated server, you will get 100% up-time guarantee of your websiteA dedicated server provides you with more bandwidth and data storage options which means you can easily add more data to your website.Security is one of the major advantages when we are talking about dedicated web hosting these servers are maintained by the single owner which makes them more secure and reliable and the data stored in these servers can be kept safe from hackers.Dedicated servers can be easily modified according to your need which means you can easily run any application which requires any special server requirements.

Cons of dedicated hosting

The main drawback of dedicated hosting is its price, dedicated servers are costly and which many people can’t affordYou need to be technically sound or you have to hire a professional while working with dedicated hosting servers.

Which hosting you should prefer?

Now, we had discussed about, shared and dedicated web hosting and about their pros and cons, the question arises which hosting plan you should select for your website. As we know shared hosting is very economical to buy and no such technical knowledge require to operate shared hosting, this type of hosting is suitable for beginners or website which have a low amount of traffic, most of the blogs are hosted in shared hosting plans so, it is advisable to start your website with shared one and once you start getting a huge amount of traffic you can switch your hosting plan from shared to dedicated ones. On the other hand, dedicated hosting is suitable for websites which have a huge amount of traffic to deal with, as the chances of getting your website crashed in peak traffic hours gets minimized. Usually companies prefer dedicated hosting as they are more secure, reliable and can be customized according to their requirements. Websites like an online e-commerce store, or website which contain a significant amount of downloadable content, or contains some important data uses dedicated hosting because it is more secure and very difficult to hack, customer support system available with dedicated hosting is also very responsive you will get customer support very quick and responsive very quick span of time.Therefore, if you are a beginner or your website is not getting a huge amount of traffic you can easily manage your website in a shared hosting on the other hand if you are creating a website for your business or expecting a huge traffic or have any specific server requirements you should prefer dedicated hosting.

The Bottom line

Both the shared and dedicated web hosting serve the same purpose of getting your website published on internet therefore it’s up to you based on your requirements and budget you can select your hosting plan there are many reliable hosting companies out there which provide you both the plans you can select a web hosting company based on their reviews, pricing, and performance in your region. Hope you like the article on shared hosting vs dedicated hosting, if you have any queries, suggestions or comments then do comment.