Dedicated servers are typically a great deal more expensive than shared hosting, and it is a decision that you must weigh carefully. The main feature of dedicated hosting is that the server that your pages reside on is not shared with any other site. This has a profound effect on the overall performance of your website.

Site Performance

Site performance is usually one of the top considerations when choosing a Web Hosting Company, and a Web Hosting package. There has been research as to how visitors react to the way that pages load, and it has been found that if your page doesn’t load within ten seconds, the visitor will leave. This delay could be caused by a number of reasons, but the most typical one is that there is too much bandwidth or space being used on the server, either by your site or by other sites that reside on the server.

Security

Security is another consideration. Ideally, when your site is the only site on a server, it is more secure than if there are multiple sites sharing the same server. When more than one site is using a server, it is at a higher risk for spam and viruses. This is an issue you don’t have to face if you have a dedicated server. It is also easier to keep your site protected if you are the only one on the server, and easier to find problems that may exist as well.

IP Addresses

Many Web Hosting companies have one IP address per server, even though multiple sites are using that server. With the sharing of an IP address, you are opened up to more threats. It is ideal to use a hosting company that assigns different IP addresses for each site on the server, or to go with dedicated hosting.

This is important because spam and viruses are often targeted to a specific IP address. You don’t know what the other clients on your server are doing – who they are offending or angering, and they may be doing something that is making them – and the IP address – a target for attacks.

It is also important to note that if the Web Host has a range of IP addresses per server, this doesn’t offer you greater protection. It gives many a false sense of security, as hackers tend to try a range of IP addresses, instead of just a single IP address.

Spammers and Blacklists

Again, you don’t know what other people on the server are doing – yet you may pay the price for their actions. For example, if you have someone on your server who is spamming, you will suffer when their IP number, which is also your IP number, makes it to the blacklist. This essentially means that every piece of email that you send out from your domain will hit the spam folder or junk folder – if it even gets through at all. The only way to completely avoid this risk is to use a dedicated server.

As you can see, even though dedicated servers are  more expensive than a shared hosting account, you will have greater service, greater security, greater performance, and much more control. All of this combined is usually well worth the price of dedicated hosting.

You can find great dedicated and shared servers at HostGator.