At the point of making the hosting decision, client is about to choose from existing hosting services. They are presented with virtual private servers, shared servers and dedicated server hosting services. All these hosting services provided by many web site hosting companies are differentiated by the amount of control a user needs or wants with existing level of responsibility in order for client's web site to perform, "serve" best possible way.
A Shared web hosting means that different personal, small- and mid-sized business web site are uploaded from ONE single so called "shared" server to the Internet. This is popular highly-in-demand solution used by web beginners, individuals, small businesses, non-profit organizations and limit-budgeted enterprises. The shared server solution is the best choice when the user is just starting out, in not expecting high traffic and doesn't require a huge storage space such as space-hogging media files like audio, video, animation and others.
In the case of your purchasing the shared hosting plan, the hosting provider takes responsibility for the services they provide. These services are server maintenance and files' organization, software installations, security updates, etc. The hosting company is responsible and accountable to keep the server up and running. The hosting professionals use mighty software for administration to manage the entire server and to run it at high scalability. They offer their clients limited "Control Panels" for managing their own web sites.
Most of the shared web servers are being run on Linux Operating System (OS). Linux possesses impressive big flexibility. It is an open-source, essentially free Operating System. Though, there are cases when web hosting providers use the Microsoft Windows Server platform while other providers use both Linux and Windows platforms.
Dedicated Web Hosting means that One web site is being hosted on One server. Single, dedicated server is used to run one web-site only without sharing it with other web sites under no condition. This is the hosting solution to take when a client expects to receive a huge amount of traffic and he would need much more bandwidth that he is not about to share with anybody. Dedicated server is able to process and to handle volume traffic easily. In that case, dedicated server requires complex of web applications, secure information exchange and highly customized activities of client's web site.
Only dedicated server hosting package can provide user with 100% control over their web sites as well as their servers. The client is 100% responsible for the web site running smooth and performing consistently. That is why this type of web hosting service requires the user to possess the technical and managerial knowledge to monitor the systems and solve issues right away. This way, dedicated hosting is best for professionals who need to have full control that includes large corporations and organizations as well as majority of commercial operations.
Dedicated server is only used by you, and therefore can't interfere by a third party. You can have a server at home but it is more frequent to have a server at website hosting company's location.
Your orient should be the size of the budget you are working with, specific details of your online business and Internet goals. This will help you decide which hosting service you choose.
A dedicated server belongs to just one client. Having control over the dedicated server means paying higher price for a dedicated server hosting service. At the same time, shared hosting servers can be less costly because the cost is being split between several shared hosting users.
Dedicated server hosting service is best for the businesses that have crucial security concerns regarding customers' confidential information. E-commerce sites are a good example of this. In the case of your personal web business being involved in eCommerce, then a dedicated server hosting plan is the way to go.
Dedicated servers are more preferable if the business owner doesn't want to compromise his business image. In the case of shared hosting plan, the server is shared with other sites among them can be found web sites with doubtful reputation.
In conclusion, we can say that the specifics of your website will lead you to a decision whether to prefer shared hosting service or dedicated server hosting plan.
