Cheap dedicated server versus
standard shared servers

There are many types of web hosting options available in today’s market. Free or paid web hosting, Unix-based hosting, Windows-powered servers, shared servers, dedicated servers, and many more. Hosting options come in several colors and flavors, and sometimes choosing the right one for you can be difficult.

The first rule you need to follow when choosing between a cheap dedicated server and shared hosting services is to carefully consider what your online business will need. Will your website deal with a high amount of traffic? Will your server have to perform intensive database operations? Will your site have features that will require you to install any application in order to perform certain functions? How much processor power will you need?

Dedicated servers have the advantage of ensuring you will get exclusive, “yours only” rights to bandwidth management, memory configuration, and disk space and quota administration. A dedicated server will also prevent your site’s performance being degraded by factors like unusual use or network-congesting traffic of other sites that are hosted at the same server. However, all of these benefits come along a higher monthly price.

On the other hand, renting a shared server can be much cheaper than renting a managed server, but you will have limited resources as well as a shared IP address. In addition, you will be unable to change global configurations or install custom-developed applications that your online business may need.

Administration and exclusivity: these two items are crucial and can make a huge difference.

With shared hosting, clients actually share the server with other website owners, which could allow the possibility of an oversold server, and generate overloads and decreased performance. So if the traffic of your website is intense, its navigation will be somehow affected. With a dedicated server, however, all the available resources are made available exclusively for your web site.

But finding a suitable discount dedicated server is not as easy as it may sound. It is necessary that you have an idea on how to configure and manage a server.
If that’s not the case, you will need to have your web hosting company managing your dedicated for you, which may increase the final price.

Though shared servers can be a great choice if the costumer does not have technical skills, some features are not that positive. They have low security level, their resources are limited, the software provided is the only one that can be used and you can't install your own, and some available ports and connections can be blocked or forbidden to use, depending on your hosting provider’s security policy.

If you choose a cheap dedicated server, nothing of that will happen and you will be able to choose the operating system and control panel you want, setting up regular backups at intervals you can define, you get to choose the hardware your site needs and the upgrades you may want in the future.

As said before, the present requirements and potential future needs of your website are the key to choose between shared hosting and a dedicated server. Consider these aspects carefully and you’ll have a profitable business for a long time.

Luca G. Browne
Dedicated Server Advisor Contributor