Dedicated and shared hosting are two main types of hosting services that web owners can opt for. In shared hosting, you are given a restricted amount of space, which is shared on one server with hundreds of other websites.
It is a top choice for beginners and users with a constrained budget and limited resources. Contrary, dedicated hosting gives you more space, bandwidth and other resources as you get your own ‘dedicated’ server, not shared by any other website.
Differences Between Shared and Dedicated Hosting
1. Hardware
Shared hosting provides all users with the same hardware (server), while in dedicated hosting, each user gets their own hardware. This makes dedicated hosting more reliable.
2. Space
Dedicated hosting gives you more space. Good dedicated hosting plans usually start from 1TB of disk space and go beyond. With shared hosting, you will typically get somewhere between 5-20 GB of storage space.
It also has limited options for upgrade and customization as compared to dedicated hosting, which allows you to easily upgrade to a better hosting plan, when the need arises. Shared hosting is generally limited and offers only the basic web hosting plan to its users.
3. Cost
As Dedicated hosting has more benefits to offer to webmasters in contrast to shared hosting, it comes with a heavy price tag. A typical dedicated hosting plan will cost you around $100 per month (the price depends on the processor, speed, RAM, hard disk space and RAID).
Shared hosting is much cheaper with monthly charges varying from $2 to $10 only (the price of every host would be cheap in the first year and a lot high in the subsequent years). For instance, iPage’s normal shared plan for WordPress and Drupal hosting currently starts from $1.99 per month, but renewal plan will start from $7.99/mo.
4. Security
Dedicated hosting is better in terms of security if judged against shared hosting. As mentioned earlier, choosing the former will get you your own server space, ensuring greater protection of your important data.
On the other hand, shared hosting splits the same space with hundreds of other websites. If a site on the shared server is compromised, the attacker may also harm your site.
Additionally, other users can abuse the server and you have to pay the price for it in shape of slow website response, lower search engine rankings, and poor website uptime. These aspects make shared hosting less secure.
5. Management, Control and Operation
The overall operation and functionality of dedicated hosting is considered to be better than shared hosting. Dedicated hosting servers offer the most powerful processors, thereby improving the site’s performance.
Whereas, in shared hosting, the majority of the servers are powered with slower connections, making the sites lag more and face downtime. Managing your site on a dedicated server is easier than a shared host as the former provides you with tons of customizing features and options to upgrade your hosting plan, whenever you want.
Shared hosting is essentially a ‘limited hosting’ option and therefore, upgrading choices are limited.
Choosing between shared and dedicated hosting is a matter of preference. If you are on a limited budget and just want to get a site up and running with no plans of expansion, shared hosting can be a good choice.
But, if you need a solid website foundation to serve hundreds of thousands clients with minimum downtime and liberty to install your own scripts, go for dedicated.