The choice between a shared hosting and a dedicated server is one that is very difficult to make. There are lot of things that are to be considered before this decision is made.
I have come across a lot of people who start an online business, spend hours and hours in deciding the appropriate domain name, hire a very good web-designer who designs a beautiful website and yet are bogged down with a poor hosting provider or, a hosting account, to only think that they committed the biggest mistake by choosing to start an online business.This is not something that is uncommon. Most of us face this situation. The biggest reason why our websites keep encountering problems is our choice of the wrong kind of hosting. Lets first understand the difference between a Shared Hosting and a Dedicated Server.
Shared Hosting - Shared hosting as the name suggests is shared by a lot of people. This means that the server on which your website is hosted is only a part of a huge server which is being used by a lot of other website owners. What difference does it make? This means that the bandwidth available would be shared by the multiple websites thus resulting in slow browsing speed and delay in loading when your visitors visit your website.
Dedicated Server - In such a hosting account you are assigned a dedicated server depending upon your space and bandwidth requirements. This means that you would not be sharing the space or, bandwidth with anyone, thus ensuring that you get better browsing speed and better satisfcation to your visitors.
When should you choose a Shared hosting account? This is good when the site you are going to host is not meant to be a commercial venture targetting huge amount of traffic. For eg: a private online album can be hosted on a Sharde hosting account. Similarly, Company websites which are meant only to share some information wiht the visitors can be hosted on shared hosting. So the consideration, as is evident is the usage of bandwidth.
A dedicated server is the best option when you decide to launch an online store which would consume a lot of bandwidth.
So choose cleverly before you start off, as it would be difficult at a later time to switch servers or, hosting accounts.
The author owns lot of online businesses and has a store that sells domains and hosting. You can find low cost domain names and hosting plans at his online store at http://www.stores4domains.com.
