In 2022 alone, it’s reported that the Dedicated Server Hosting Market was worth $14.26 Billion (USD). Thanks to the flexibility and security of dedicated hosting — especially when compared to shared servers — the market is only expected to grow.
However, you might be wondering about dedicated server hosting vs shared hosting.
In short, dedicated hosting is essential for all businesses. It offers access to the most powerful server types and is ideal for keeping the pace as your website gains traffic. These servers are designed for consumer websites and outperform shared servers across the board.
They ramp up site performance, ensuring your customers experience a page load speed that outperforms your competition. Even better, dedicated servers provide you with peace of mind, optimizing security.
Shared vs Dedicated Servers
GoDaddy, Siteground, and InMotion: You’ve heard the names, but did you know they’re all shared servers? You might save money in the short run, but a security breach can cost your business an excessive amount of money.
Consider IBM’s 2023 data for data breaches. On average, organizations that employ fewer than 500 individuals may face $3.31 million in data breaches. One recorded breach record can cost organizations $164, and more than half of companies experienced some type of data breach within a year.
When using shared hosting, your business is sharing one web server with countless other websites, accounts, and users. Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, is one server per user. For visual comparison, a shared server is akin to living in an apartment building whereas dedicated servers resemble living in a single-family home.
Drawbacks of Shared Servers
Although anything on the Internet is vulnerable to cyber attacks, shared servers have higher odds of being hacked by anyone with Internet access. This makes publicly hosted resources more vulnerable to exploitation. It only takes one bug to steal information and data or install malware. Since shared hosting often has hundreds of other websites on one server, the risk of a cyber attack is greater — by far.
One of the most common shared hosting websites is WordPress. This means that its shared server is particularly susceptible to exploits from cyber attacks.
Take dedicated servers, on the other hand. If a hacker tries to compromise this type of server, the odds of other customers feeling the effects are slim. Should an attacker upload malware to a dedicated server, the only sites affected would be those on the dedicated server. If the same hacker did this to a shared server, every customer hosted would be affected by the malware.
Although shared hosting tends to be more inexpensive, it comes at the price of security. You’re intertwined with other site owners, which means you can’t control what happens on their websites. This includes content and security measures.
The Importance of Dedicated Servers
When you use a dedicated server, it will only be assigned to your organization. Servers are necessary for running applications and hosting the most effective websites. In short, they allow your customers access to your products and services.
The organization that does your hosting will maintain this physical server, managing it. They’ll allocate one server per customer so nothing is shared. This gives you complete autonomy over your organization and the way it uses its physical server. These servers are especially helpful for applications that need high availability or that require significant resources from your server.
Although some companies opt to purchase servers to keep on-site, this is often expensive and requires a significant amount of network connectivity and bandwidth. You also need a skilled IT staff and a room just for your server.
On the other hand, you can rent a server. It’s more cost-effective up front, and you don’t have to worry about maintenance, as your vendor handles this.
When you invest in dedicated hosting, you don’t have to worry about resources that you might have to share with other organizations. This includes apps, users, and websites. You’ll be the only user, which means the server’s resources are exclusive to your organization. This includes CPU usage, disk space, RAM, and bandwidth.
The entire server is for you to utilize, so all major risks of shared hosting are essentially eliminated. This includes another server tenant using up all the available resources, causing your IT operations to lag. It also includes the elimination of network congestion, slow loading time (especially during peak website traffic hours), the occasional server “crash,” one tenant running a bad script which opens up all tenants to security threats, and recurring downtime.
When your pages load faster, you’re able to quickly and efficiently satisfy the demands of your customers. Why? Dedicated servers provide faster software compared to shared servers.
When you use a dedicated server, you’re signing up for greater reliability. Shared servers can lead to reduced performance, especially during times of high usage. This can in turn lead to higher-than-normal bounce rates and lost revenue, as consumers navigate away from your site.
Dedicated servers offer a solution and one your business needs. They guarantee that your site runs quickly and smoothly, even during peak hours. Dedicated servers configured correctly guarantee users a great experience regardless of the server’s usage or website traffic.
You’ll most likely find that dedicated server hosting provides you with top redundancy, so your website won’t experience downtime, even during power outages.
Why You Need to Monitor Your Servers
Dedicated server monitoring is a must-have for any organization. Otherwise, your network is prone to experiencing performance issues along with other vulnerabilities. The result may be a cyber attack, compromising sensitive data.
You may also find that your server performs poorly, affecting the productivity of your employees. This is especially true if your network is compromised from a cyber attack, damaged, or taken down.
When a server is monitored, metrics are gathered. This includes data, traffic, and latency. It helps to paint a picture of your individual servers, applications, and networks that complete your IT infrastructure. Part of this process is real-time server monitoring with short and long-term performance analysis.
Additionally, you’ll have an understanding of your server’s performance and potential issues so you can make decisions using available data. If there are errors to troubleshoot, you’ll know about them ahead of time. Monitoring also works to keep your logs accessible and secure.
Choose Dedicated Servers for Your Organization
Let’s B Media only uses dedicated servers. This way, your information is secure and you receive routine maintenance, updates, backups, and more. The result is a well-oiled website that runs smoothly, loads quickly, and satisfies the demands of all your customers.
Our creative team of experts offers website design, development, hosting, and content writing. We’re also here to help curate the best brand identity and logo design for your company with state-of-the-art graphic design solutions.
Contact our team to learn more about our services and how Let’s B Media can help you conquer the competition.