Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Hosting vs. Cloud hosting: A Comparative Review
Hosting solutions have become an important part of the overall factors to consider when choosing a web platform as your CMS is only as good as the hosting solution that is powering it. While many people place their focus on the price of hosting, there is the need to avoid overlooking the most critical and important areas that affect the performance of your website. Here we will compare shared, cloud, and dedicated hosting.
A wrong choice of hosting solution may lead to an entirely slow website and also open you up to a variety of security problems such as data loss, breach, and server crash to mention a few.
When choosing a hosting solution for your website needs, the ultimate choice to be made will depend on your platform’s current and future resource requirement and the developmental goals with regards to growth and expansion.
To cater to your varying needs, there are different types of hosting solutions that are available and can be chosen from to meet specific needs. When looking to choose the best hosting solutions for your needs, it is recommended that you carefully consider some of the following factors which may impact your overall choice.
- Your monthly budget
- The daily traffic requirement of your website
- Expected increase in traffic or traffic spikes
- Your support needs
- Security requirement
- Performance demands
To help you get a clear understanding and choose the best hosting solutions for your needs, below are some of the important information you should know.
1. What is Shared Hosting?
Shared Hosting is the most economical hosting solution available on the market today. Shared hosting solutions have specifically been suitable for blogging and corporate websites that boast of low to moderate traffic. Several websites, through the use of a single shared hosting server, can also share the same resources such as memory allocation, disk space, and bandwidth. The shared hosting solution is a very much convenient option that does not require in-depth skills and know-how. Also, it provides users with a complete administration system and takes care of all the features related to the hosting system such as software installation, backups, maintenance, security, updates, etc.
Shared hosting provides users with a number of benefits including;
- Affordable pricing structure
- Ease of use as shared hosting provides a simple and effective solution that adapts to user’s specific needs.
- Services and performance advantages
2. What is Dedicated Hosting?
In the world of dedicated hosting, as the name implies, the server is dedicated to a particular user thus providing users with a blank slate to work with. Dedicated hosting is the most suitable solution for websites that generate a lot of traffic and those websites that need a lot of website resources. Dedicated hosting is more recommended for e-commerce websites, marketplaces, social networks, and more. While no server can firmly guarantee 100 percent security, dedicated hosting remains a great option for websites with advanced security requirements. In addition to its security advantage, dedicated hosting servers also allows for improved speed and multiple websites with unlimited traffic.
Benefits of Dedicated hosting server
- Administrative autonomy is an important benefit offered by dedicated servers. Dedicated servers, when access to kernel is included in the offering allows you to install your own applications and services and configure them as you wish.
- Optimal performance is guaranteed as users are provided with a server and resources dedicated to their needs.
- Advanced security is also another important benefit of a dedicated hosting server. Dedicated hosting servers allow you to privately manage your file system and databases.
3. Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting like ServerMania Cloud Servers is fairly similar in characteristics when compared to the Virtual Private System (VPS). The Virtual Private System relies heavily on the use of physical servers which houses the information and resources to be deployed by the website while on the other hand, cloud hosting is based on several servers. For cloud hosting, virtual resources are not sedentary in a location but instead shared between multiple server computers that all work together to create a large virtual network which is referred to as the cloud. One of the basic advantages of cloud hosting is that it is suitable for all needs.
Cloud hosting trumps the VPS in a number of ways including the limitation of bandwidth and data transfer. Cloud hosting can also tap into the same resources repeatedly. For a bit of context, running a VPS is similar to trying to run a laptop computer on battery, while this may provide full functionality, the battery is guaranteed to run out causing the computer to shut down.
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