5 Reasons Why Dedicated Servers are Good for Your Website
Our world today is increasingly driven by tech. We use it to search information, buy products, consume content and even keep in touch with family and friends. And if a business wants to stay relevant in these times while also ensuring future growth, it has to have a bulletproof web presence.
One of the most important things needed for a good web presence is reliable web hosting. Sure enough, going for a shared server at the beginning makes a lot of sense. It costs less than dedicated hosting and when your business is new, any savings in expense eventually adds to your bottom-line. However, as your business grows and the number of visitors to your website increases, it is time to look past shared hosting.
The advantages of dedicated web hosting are numerous. Here we see five reasons why your business or website is helped by opting for dedicated hosting.
1. Better Security
Normally, any discussion about dedicated hosting consigns this topic to the very end. The security of your hosting, however, should be the number one concern when choosing a hosting service. And if your business stores any sensitive visitor information or accepts online payments, security is of paramount importance.
The security of a shared hosting service is only as good as the hosting company itself. Shared servers are vulnerable to attacks and security breaches like hacks, viruses and other threats. Further, shared hosting companies don’t keep you informed about installation of patches, updates or even antivirus and firewall installations. You are virtually in the dark about what happens with your server.
With managed dedicated servers, you do not have to sweat over any of these things. It offers brilliant security for your website and the information stored by it. While you can take complete charge of your server, there is also the option of hiring a server management provider. Such a provider takes care of all aspects of server maintenance like installing software, security updates and upgrades.
2. Server & Traffic Load
The functionality of your website is greatly impacted by the amount of traffic it attracts. To give you a rough example, if the number of unique visitors to your site exceeds 1,000 daily, you must opt for dedicated hosting. Shared servers are not capable of ensuring a smooth browsing experience in the face of such traffic. This is because in a shared server, multiple websites are hosted which can create a backlog of processes. Further, one or more of those sites can hog the server’s resources. Both these issues can impact the user experience of your website.
Get Hi Formance’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Thankfully, a switch to dedicated hosting is all you need to prevent these problems.
3. Page Loading Speed
A slow loading speed negatively affects your website’s performance. Usually, most visitors wait for a couple of seconds for the page to load beyond which they simply quit the site or move onto the next one. In addition, Google has incorporated the load speed as an important metric when ranking a website. So a slow loading speed can directly impact your search engine ranking.
When your site cohabits with others on a shared server, there is always the danger of the server’s resources being overwhelmed. This can lead to downtimes for your website. A downtime is when the site slows down to a crawl or won’t load at all. The simplest way to avoid this predicament is by moving your website to a dedicated server.
4. Custom Programming Ability
Among the best benefits of dedicated server hosting is that it enables you to run custom programs and applications. Examples include shell scripts, cron jobs and any other custom software. Conversely, most shared server platforms offer only a limited set of custom programming options.
Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, lets you pick an operating system of your choice, the hardware you need, the software you require and a ton of other programming options. In other words, if you are looking to take complete control of your hosting ecosystem, look no further than dedicated servers.
5. Future Growth & Load Balancing
If you’ve put in place a robust marketing strategy for your website and are expecting to see a growth in your web presence, the shared hosting vs dedicated hosting debate is all but moot. This is because if you leave the migration for too late in the day, results can be devastating — especially if you hurry it. A much better option is to plan a change well in advance, which gives you enough time to search and shortlist a good hosting provider.
Load balancing in shared hosting parlance is when more than one account tries to use the server’s resources at the same time. And before you can ascertain if there is a load balancing problem, the damage to your website might already be done. By moving to dedicated hosting, you are in-charge of scheduling your processes and jobs which ensures proper load distribution.
Dedicated servers are a must for your business. Even if you do not deal with online payments or if your website is a personal one, dedicated hosting is worth a shot as it offers the kind of future-proofing that other forms of hosting just cannot compete with.
