What is Dedicated Hosting?

Dedicated hosting means that one website has an entire server exclusively for its own use.

A web server has a large data capacity and the vast majority of websites are fairly small in size, so it makes sense in normal circumstances to host multiple websites on one server.

There can often be hundreds of websites all hosted on a single server in a 'shared hosting' environment - but there are many reasons why it is sometimes preferable, or even essential, that your website is hosted on its own dedicated server.

Why you may need a dedicated web server

If you have a large and busy website that gets thousands of visitors every day, a shared hosting environment may not be able to cope with the resources your site is consuming, especially if you get a sudden, unexpected spike in traffic, causing you to exceed your bandwidth allowance.

If you are sharing a server, and one of the other sites on that server starts to consume a lot of resources, then all of the other sites will be negatively effected - so a dedicated server is highly recommended if the performance of your site is vitally important.

Dedicated hosting is more flexible. In a shared environment, you don't have any access to the server or any control over the software that is installed - so if you have a complex ecommerce website, or need to run any specialized applications, you are highly likely to need your own dedicated server.

The security of your website is also much greater with dedicated hosting. If you are sharing a server, a hacker only has to exploit a weakness in one of the other sites hosted with you and they may be able to gain access to the whole server.

With a dedicated server, you are in total control - if you are running a serious web enterprise, you can't afford to take any chances with breaches in security, leaving your site exposed to hackers.