Wednesday, January 28, 2009

What's Best, Dedicated or Shared Server?

By Ricardo d Argence

A very important decision you have to make if you decide to have a sophisticated website is what type of server will be best to use for hosting your business. A site available on the web is hosted on a server. It gives you space online and brings traffic to your site.

When trying to decide what type of internet host you want for your website, you have two types of servers to chose from. Personal and small business websites tend to favor shared servers. Dedicated Servers are other type of server.

Some of the pros of sharing a server are: Some of them are free. Often, templates are offered in shared hosting to enable people with little computer expertise to create a website. Shared servers offer a variety of different services. Shared services are have a variety of different plans which are relatively inexpensive.

The needs of small businesses and personal websites on the internet are best met by shared servers. Some shared servers, especially the free ones, will want to put mandatory ads on your website. This is how they pay for their website. Additional services let you put your own advertisements on your website, increasing the income from it.

Shared servers, however, are not ideal for large businesses. Because you share the server with other websites, the bandwidth may have a problem with directing your traffic to your website if it becomes too heavy. If you are getting thousands of visitors a day, the bandwidth may not be able to keep up; leaving some of your customers in the dark.

In addition, there is a limited amount of space for most shared servers. A dedicated server is the best option for a growing or large internet business. Not only does it free up the bandwidth so that customers are no longer left out in the cold, but it also increases your space size. This is especially important if your business has forums or shopping carts. These are called databases and tend to take up a lot of space.

Although dedicated servers cost a substantial amount more to get started then a shared server, building businesses really don't have much of an option. If your goal is to grow your internet business, you need to select a dedicated server.

A dedicated server is mose expensive that a shared one, although even at $100 a month, it will pay for itself very quickly. You will basically be hosting your own website, and will be in control over as many advertisements and business connections you want on your site. This can also bring you in extra revenue.

With a server used only for your business, there is no limit to what you do for your business. You can have businness connections on your website that are linked with your type of business. There are all sorts of ways to make money online and most of them include advertising of some sort. You can use all the advertisement you want with a dedicated server and earn more profit on the website. - 16003

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