So you’ve finally decided to go ahead and host your site. Well, the decision you need to make now is regarding whether you want to go it all alone or if you want to share your hosting with someone else. Whichever option you choose, you are likely to have a whole host of advantages and disadvantages. So it is better for you to know all the pros and cons before you make your decision.
Advantages
One of the biggest advantages of shared hosting is the price. Since you ‘share’ the server space with several others, you only pay a fraction of the price you otherwise would. Over a period of time, this can work out to a lot of money!
When you share a server for hosting, you typically pay a third party to take care of the back end. This means that you have on-call support for whatever issues you have with your hosting. Since you are a paying customer, you will get quality service.
Most shared hosting service providers often secure a whole lot of tools and applications to make the hosting process easier. When you become a subscriber, you get access to these for free or for a nominal cost. The cost is low since it is shared among all the users of the server space. If you were hosting yourself on the other hand, you would need to pay the full price to secure these services.
Disadvantages
The chief disadvantage of shared hosting is, well, lack of total control With your own server, you can choose how and where you want to partition and host your site. On a shared server, the service provider does that for you.
On your own server, you define the load that you can handle and you can manage it to the best of your ability. On a shared server, you may not always be able to manage or predict loads, especially if your site has a lot of traffic.
On a shared hosting server, you may not always be able to choose who else is on the server. If unfortunately, you happen to share your server with a Spam service provider, your site too could get blocked. If the shared hosting service provider does not have good anti-virus systems in place, the risky behaviour of one of the other users could end up affecting you too in a bad way.
August 10th, 2009 |
