Hosting your site on a dedicated server will cost more than using a shared server. But dedicated hosting has certain advantages that might be crucial for your business – read this article to get to know about them.
When choosing a hosting plan and provider for your website, you might want to opt for a dedicated server. This solution should come in handy for businesses of any scale and industry that might start scaling in the future. In this article, we’ll analyze the five primary benefits of this type of hosting. We’ll compare dedicated server hosting with shared server hosting so that you better understand the essence of the two popular alternatives.
Dedicated Resources
On a shared server, all the sites draw resources from the same pool. If one of these sites faces an unexpected spike in traffic, your site might go down for the lack of resources. On a dedicated server, that would never happen. Your disk space, CPU, RAM and bandwidth will belong only to you. During peak usage or traffic hours, your site will load just as fast as usual.
On a shared server, several sites will have the same IP address. If one tenant starts spamming or performing black hat SEO, search engines could penalize the IP address — and your site will suffer from sanctions too. With dedicated server hosting, your site will have a unique IP address that no third parties impact. That’s especially important for e-commerce sites that feature SSL certificates for credit card processing as well as those that have dedicated mail servers.
Thanks to a dedicated server, customers will be able to access the full functionality of your site at any moment. That should enable you to achieve the following goals:
- Strengthen brand reputation
- Expand client base
- Boost sales
- Maximize revenue
As your business scales and the market environment changes, you’ll be able to customize your server to meet your new needs. Here are a few examples of what exactly you might want to do:
- Install any OS, tool or app
- Set up and use any resource control system
- Deploy security and data backup measures
- Control the way users interact with the server
- Enable a web admin to script in any language
Dedicated servers typically rely on the most advanced hardware. You’ll be able to benefit from cutting-edge tech as soon as it hits the market.
If needed, you’ll be able to scale both up and down. Please mind that adding and removing components might cause unnecessary downtime. So it would be wise to align server changes with your business plan instead of reconfiguring the settings randomly.
Fast Load Speed
These informative statistics should enable you to better understand the importance of fast load speed:
- Every second added onto your load time reduces your conversions by 7%
- A one-second delay in response time can decrease page views by 11%
- If a site needs more than 3 seconds to load fully, almost 40% of visitors will be likely to leave it
- Slow load speed is the main reason why 46% of consumers abandon their online shopping carts
If your site loads fast on any device, you’ll be able to add custom features to it, such as video streaming, MP3s or animations.
The faster your site loads, the higher its Google search engine ranking.
More Reliable Uptime
For marketing purposes, a shared hosting provider might tell you that the uptime of your site will be 99% or even higher. But since you’ll be sharing your resources with many other sites, your actual uptime will be lower. On a dedicated server, you should be likely to enjoy a steady uptime of 99% or even higher. Data centers hosting dedicated servers also offer top redundancy, which should increase your site’s availability even further. Even in case of a power outage or natural disaster, you’ll be unlikely to suffer downtime.
Excellent Security
Shared hosting might be prone to the following security issues:
- Malicious or accidental neighbor activity that impacts your site
- Suffering malware or a virus from a neighboring site
- Losing access to data or suffering downtime because of a neighboring site experiencing a DDoS attack
- A malicious actor using a server neighbor as an entry point to infiltrate the device and access your data
All these issues are irrelevant for sites hosted on dedicated servers. This type of hosting includes top-tier protection against cybersecurity attacks and real-time server monitoring.
You can flexibly fine-tune your security settings so that they precisely meet your needs:
- Set up new and configure existing firewalls
- Use any anti-virus and malware program you like
- Deploy an intrusion detection system
- Introduce a custom disaster recovery plan
- Limit admin access
- Protect data with encryption at rest
- Force users to invent complex passwords and update credentials regularly
You can be sure the physical server will be also kept safe. To protect their hardware and data, hosting providers normally rely on the following measures: armed guards, mantraps, locks with biometric scans, motion detection, and round-the-clock video surveillance.
If your business needs to comply with PCI and HIPAA regulations, you should opt for dedicated server hosting for security reasons.
Cost-Effectiveness
The most affordable hosting option is a shared server. But if we focus not on the price but value for money, a dedicated server should be the most reasonable choice. To cut down expenses, you might want to manage your server yourself — but this requires technical skills and expertise. If you lack them, you can opt for a managed plan that most providers should have. The provider might be ready to offer you the following services:
- Device setup and configuration
- General maintenance
- Backup and recovery
- Server monitoring
- Software updates
You won’t need to hire top-tier IT staff to carry out all these tasks. Your in-house IT team will be able to focus on high-priority duties.
You might be able to choose from fully or semi-managed services.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, you found this article informative and now you better understand the benefits of hosting your website on a dedicated server. All the resources will belong only to you. You’ll benefit from fast load times, high uptime, excellent security and affordable costs. Depending on your technical expertise, you’ll be able to choose between managed or unmanaged services.
