Is shared hosting a better option than dedicated hosting?
With thousands of online hosting firms available worldwide, it is most of the times a difficult task when trying to choose the most reliable and affordable option for hosting your website(s) on. Whether you are looking for cheap servers or have a larger pocket that can afford more expensive packages, one of the most popular questions nowadays is whether you should opt for a shared hosting package or a whole dedicated solution.
The main difference among them is obvious: although shared means most of the times the cheapest hosting solution money can buy, it is also the “base level” when compared to opting for a VPS or even a dedicated server. Basically, you are sharing a server with maybe thousands of other website owners, thus the resources being somehow limited. On the other hand, dedicated servers come with many extra-features (at much higher costs) but the most important one is the fact that one server is used by a single customer, including administrative access and so on.
But it is always dedicated hosting better than shared hosting? Not really! Indeed, if you are in need of those extra-resources/power provided by a dedicated server you should definitely search for a reliable solution in dedicated are, but on the other hand most websites do not require that amount of extra-features and moreover, most website owners are not so tech-savvy as they should in order to get the most out of a dedicated solution.
On top of that, if you choose a unmanaged dedicated server you must be aware that you need to do all the maintenance routine work, work that you will not encounter when using shared solutions. From hardware failure to backups, security and even logs reading, all should be taken care of by you. If you feel you will not be able to keep an eye on these (or just do not have the time for maintaining your dedicated server) you should probably opt for a shared package or, for those with a larger budget, a managed dedicated package, package where everything related to maintenance is taken care of by a specialised team.
It will take you a lot of time to start an online store (sometimes referred to as a web shop or an ecommerce website). Eventually it will take a lot of money too since you will need to invest in web designers and programmers. You are going to need to have all of these things in order to create a user-friendly website. Of course, you will have to think about all of the legal issues that also go along with starting your own online business. This is why you will have people telling you that it is difficult to start a website business today.
