Shared hosting Vs. Dedicated hosting

Almost every business is trying to come online by having its own identity in the form of a website. And getting a website up and running is not a worry anymore with a huge list of web hosting services. Right? Well, let’s talk about it in detail.

Every web hosting company provides different types of web hosting servers. Some of the well-known hostings are Shared hosting, VPS, and Dedicated hosting. Almost every web hosting company comes up with its own set of tools and resources and gives it another name.

Besides discussing shared hosting and dedicated hosting, we will also answer some frequently asked questions about web hosting packages. For example, if VPS is a shared server or dedicated server.

Ask questions in the comment section

If you think I missed something important about the topic, please let me know in the comment section below. I will update this article if needed.

How websites are hosted?

Just in case you do not know how a website works, here is a brief intro in simple words.

A web page is simply a document that is stored on a computer aka. server. The server is set up in a way that makes that document available to everyone through the internet using a friendly URL or document address.

That server could be your laptop old laptop or a modern PC. So this is very simple. Right.

Now you must be thinking about how many computers needed to host thousands of web pages. And the answer is “One”. Just one computer with a lot of memory and storage can be configured to host a gazillion of websites.

Notice

For a deep understanding of how a web server is set up and managed, read our web server setup series.

Create Virtual Computers or Shared Servers

One computer can be divided into multiple smaller virtual computers. So every website will have its own filesystem to store files, memory to run the website, etc.

Let’s say to host a hundred blogs, we have a computer with 200GB Memory (RAM) and 20TB SSD storage. We can create 100 virtual servers and divide all the computer resources between all virtual servers. So each server has 200/100 = 2GB RAM and 20TB/100 = 20GB storage.

There are more modern solutions for virtual computers such as Virtualbox, Docker, and Kubernetes, etc.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is nothing but a virtual server. The hosting company sets up multiple virtual servers over one physical computer. Shared hosting also means that you are sharing server resources like memory, disk, processing power, and IP address, etc. with other users.

Pros of shared hosting

• Low cost
• Graphical dashboard & Easy to use tools
• Scripts to install WordPress & other CMS

Cons of shared hosting

• Shared resources (Higher downtime risk & less reliable)
• More security risks because of other users on the server
• No root access

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting means you get a single server to host your website. You can use server resources without sharing them with anyone else.

Pros of dedicated hosting

• No resource sharing (Low downtime risk & more reliable)
• More secure
• Root access

Cons of dedicated hosting

• Dedicated hosting is costly
• Requires more technical knowledge to configure server
• Demand continuous server monitoring for updates etc.

So this is basically it about shared hosting vs. dedicated hosting. But as I said above, on any web hosting website, you see many more types of packages that make you so confused. Here are the following packages that make you think if they are on shared server or dedicated server-

• VPS
• WordPress hosting

Is VPS a shared server or dedicated server?

VPS, stands for Virtual Private Server, is a virtual server. Like a shared server, it is also a part of the main computer but without sharing. When you get a VPS hosting, you get a virtual server, can use all resources for yourself, no sharing and get full root access.

Is WordPress hosting a shared server or dedicated server?

WordPress is the most popular CMS. Because of its popularity, almost all hosting companies have servers optimized for running WordPress websites faster & easier. The server comes with all the tools preinstalled for setting up and managing WordPress websites.

WordPress hosting can be a shared server, a VPS, or entirely a dedicated server. Most web hosting companies do not mention what type of server they have optimized for WordPress. Mostly on WordPress hosting page, the system memory and processor cores are not even mentioned.

So before you buy WordPress hosting, contact the support or sales team and ask about the server behind WordPress hosting. That is the only source of information to know whether the WordPress hosting is a Shared server or a dedicated, or something else.

Conclusion

This was about shared hosting vs. dedicated hosting. I will keep updating this article with more information so if you have any questions, drop it in the comment section below.

If you are confused which hosting server should you go with, in the next article, I will discuss how to select your hosting company and hosting package. Yes, hosting company matters because it’s responsibe for your website, so know all the points before hitting that “I agree” checkbox.

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