When you look for a website host, the type of hosting they provide will usually fall into two basic categories: shared or dedicated.
Shared web hosting is when they’ve got one server and are hosting several different websites on it, yours included. You share the disk space, CPU, RAM and resources on that single server with all the other sites. Some shared hosting plans can hundreds of sites on the server making it slow loading and even unstable.
The Benefits Of A Dedicated Server
Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, involves a single server that is completely assigned to your site.
You will still have specified amounts of disk space, bandwidth, and other resources, but those will likely be higher than on a shared server, and everything that’s there is all yours. You can configure your site the way you want to.
The choice of a managed dedicated server, as the name implies, involves the web host taking care of the server hardware and software for you. You still have control of how your website is organized and run, but the behind-the-scenes maintenance of its home is taken care of by the site host. Some of the services will vary from host to host, but many of them will also manage your web applications (doing upgrades, installing security patches, and so on) as well as the databases for the site.
A dedicated server will undoubtedly cost more than being on a shared server, but even within this category of web hosts, there are two types of arrangement that will have different prices: un-managed or managed servers.
An Unmanaged Dedicated Server Can Be A Cheaper Option But….
If you choose an unmanaged dedicated server, you will undoubtedly pay less. But this also means that you administer the entire thing yourself. If you or someone in your company have the technical ability to do this, then such an option will probably not create many problems.
But you’ll need someone to keep completely up to date when it comes to security issues for your software, and have someone who can troubleshoot other server problems. If any of your software or your operating system need security fixes, it will be your tech person applying them.
In an unmanaged server situation, if there are problems with the server that you have to ask the web host to deal with, you’ll likely have to pay them for this support. Or if you will need to pay someone at your end to do regular maintenance and security fixes, yet wouldn’t need them if you chose a managed server, then you might want to look at whether you would save any money at all by going this route.
When deciding between these two types of dedicated servers, you need to make an honest assessment both of the technical abilities within your own business and, frankly, how busy you are. If you have a business that’s absolutely booming, you may be able to hire someone to devote themselves to managing your server, and this might still be less expensive than having the web host manage it themselves.
But if you’re unsure whether you can spare people to do these management tasks, or if you really don’t have your own technical resources, then perhaps you should choose a managed dedicated server for your own peace of mind and, more importantly, the security and smooth running of your internet business.
