Once a website is built, it needs to be hosted; otherwise, how are potential customers going to find your website if it is unavailable on the internet? A website is hosted in either one of two ways: shared hosting or dedicated hosting. When comparing the two, shared hosting is cheaper, but it has a slow performance. On the other hand, dedicated hosting is expensive, but it offers the highest performance benchmark for your website.
When deciding between the two, a lot of factors have to be considered. The most important factors to take into account are discussed below. They will aid you to make a better choice when selecting between the two types of hosting available.
· The Type of Website
When considering between shared and dedicated hosting, first consider the kind of website you are creating. If you have a small business and are merely seeking an internet presence, then it’s better to choose shared hosting. But if you are running a large corporation and aiming to provide a unique and seamless service to your customers, select dedicated hosting.
· The Kind of Content Present
A website has different types of content such as text, graphics, videos, animations, etc. If you have a simple website which just provides information regarding your company or business, then shared hosting is the best choice. On the flipside, if your website is heavily loaded with animations and videos, then dedicated hosting should be selected.
In case you run a simple website, you can save on bandwidth costs by uploading media on video sharing websites like YouTube. Even if your website has static images in place, shared hosting will work because only content-rich media requires higher bandwidth than what shared hosting is capable enough to provide.
· The Number of Visitors
Obviously, your website will get visitors and as such, you need to know a rough estimate of the amount of traffic you will be receiving. Why? This is because if you have a normal informational website, then shared hosting is a good choice as the number of visitors won’t put a load on the server. But if you are running a service, you will have large numbers of visitors on your website which might load up the server, especially if it is not capable enough to handle it.
Hence, selecting dedicated hosting in such cases would be the ideal choice. This is also true if you are launching an app-based service. Therefore, you can receive an estimate of the traffic through online tools like Alexa; you can view the amount of visitors your competitors are getting.
· The Downtime of Your Website
Websites can go down if they receive large amounts of traffic; the duration for which a website is temporarily unavailable is known as downtime. The point that needs to be considered is whether or not you can afford to have your website down for short period of time. If you are running a small business website, it won’t matter to your clients even if the website goes down for some time.
In such situations, shared hosting is an excellent option as it has lower costs associated with it. However, if you are running vital services related to finances or marketing, the downtime matters and you can lose customers if your website goes down even for a few minutes. In this case, you will have to opt for dedicated hosting as the server is capable enough to handle large traffic volumes and it won’t go offline.
