Almost every business is trying to come online by having its own identity on 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.
Table of Contents
Every web hosting company provides different types of web hosting servers. Some of the well-known hosting solutions are Shared hosting, VPS, and Dedicated hosting. Almost every web hosting company comes up with its own 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?
If 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 to make 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 are 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.
Read our web server setup series for a deep understanding of how a web server is set up and managed.
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.
We have a computer with 200GB Memory (RAM) and 20TB SSD storage to host a hundred blogs. 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.
What’s 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 sharing server resources like memory, disk, processing power, 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 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 a 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 to 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 them in the comment section below.
If you are confused about which hosting service you should go with, in the next article, I will discuss how to select your hosting company and hosting package. Yes, the hosting company matters because it’s responsible for your website, so know all the points before hitting that “I agree” checkbox.