If you’re just starting with a new website, there’s no need to worry about dedicated hosting; shared hosting will offer plenty of bandwidth and storage, and you can worry about changing when your site becomes more popular. However, if you are lucky enough to be a well-established company, and finding that your current hosting package is too limited for the levels of traffic you are experiencing, you may want to consider switching to dedicated hosting.

If you go for dedicated hosting, your site will be much faster, as you will not be sharing a server with a hundred or so other sites belonging to other customers of your hosting company. This option is certainly more expensive – it might cost into the thousands of pounds a month, rather than tens – but if your website is successful enough to warrant it, it’s certainly worth looking into.

Dedicated hosting is ideal for sites which deal with a great deal of traffic or with secure e-commerce applications; those which have sensitive content; and developers and designers who wish to provide shared hosting to their customers.

Dedicated hosting may sound expensive, but not in comparison to buying and maintaining all the hardware yourself, as well as getting internet connectivity and paying for monitoring and status updates. Resellers and developers can benefit from this arrangement, as the cost of the account falls every time they add another customer to the service.

As with buying shared hosting, make sure that you are working with a reputable firm and that they offer good telephone support, and uptime and satisfaction guarantees. You will also want to ask about which operating systems the hosting company can provide: whether you are a Unix or a Windows NT fan, you need to check that your host offers the OS you require. Also ask for information about programming and databases, and web server software. Find out precisely what hardware you will be given, and what protection is provided against hard disk crashes and the like – ask if they use RAID. Check out the back-up options available; the importance of this cannot be emphasised enough.

Other considerations are bandwidth allowance and whether you can pay to have more; whether your server is on a shared or a dedicated port; whether the network you are connected to is on a switch or a hub; and what sort of connection your host has. Check whether any figures they give you relate to their network, or the network of their provider. Also find out how much of the network is utilised.

Finally, a few more questions to ask: can you get a custom server/system configuration? How easy is it to set up your site on the server, and will you be offered any support in that regard? How easy will it be to administrate your site? Are server ports monitored? How long is the contract, and how long does your obligation last? Are you allowed to resell shared hosting sites on your server, if that is your intention?

As you can see, there is much to be considered – basically, do not enter into dedicated hosting lightly. If it’s necessary for your website, make sure you do your research and perhaps seek professional advice if you are not sure. Ask lots of questions and try to find a hosting company who meets your needs very closely. In the long-term, you will be very glad you did so.

Author: Natalie Catchpole

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