Whats The difference between shared and dedicated web servers

Possibly the largest feature in selecting business hosting is going to be your budget . The price of a hosting environment can vary dramatically from different solutions, and of course with different levels of companies. The difference between uk business class hosting and standard shared hosting is massive. With a business class web host you can expect much better support and reliability but this will come at a premium. Shared hosting is normally done on a very tight budget. Is your hosting going to be for business or personal use? Critical business website should be hosted with a business class host. If the website is a personal blog with no monetary blog, do you really want to be paying a premium? If not then it is safe to say that a shared web host would be fine.

Another consideration is whether you require a dedicated server or shared hosting. Does your website use a lot of resources? Busy websites are typically not suited for hosting on a shared platform. Should your website not get many visitors each day then a dedicated server would be complete waste. With that, dedicated servers attract a higher price tag, where as shared hosting will cost you significantly less.

Managed or unmanaged dedicated servers

Using a managed dedicated server for your web hosting environment is normally the safer and best option. A managed dedicated server will be taken care of by your hosting company. The level of management varies from just patching and security updates through to full website tweaking and taking care of it. When you get a managed service, expect the price to rise. Should you be experienced admin then you would probably opt for an unmanaged dedicated server. This is of course a much cheaper option but you are responsible for taking care of the secruity and updates through to OS issues etc. The hardware and network side of things will still be taken care of by the hosting company. With a shared hosting, the server level security will be take care of as with any other server issues. However the security of your website will be your responsibility.

A different option – virtual dedicated server

The other alternative to review is virtual dedicated servers. This setup is considered the middle ground. You won’t have dedicated hardware but you get your own dedicated amount of resources. Of course you’ll be separated from other hosting accounts that might cause issues in a shared environment. Because of them being middle of the road the price reflects this along with the resources you need and can easily upgrade if necessary.