If you want to develop a website for your business, you will come across the decision expressed in the title of this article. There are advantages and disadvantages to each option that we will review in this article.
Publishing a website on the Internet has three main stages: its development, hosting and maintenance over time.
The first phase comprises the entire programming and organization of website content. In addition, its design, color choice and graphic appearance are part of this phase as well.
Hosting includes server and domain configuration tasks so that the website is hosted (stored) on a server on the Internet. This way it is published and therefore accessible to anyone entering your address in the browser.
Finally, the maintenance phase is about the updates that will be needed over time to keep the website up to date. Additionally, updating the platforms / programming languages involved may also be a necessity to correct any bugs or security flaws encountered.
In order to host your website on the Internet you need a server. A server is no more than a high-capacity computer system with websites stored that are permanently available on the Internet.
One of the options you face when consulting the pricing and conditions of a company providing this service is choosing between dedicated and shared hosting.
Dedicated hosting is a server that only keeps your website hosted. Thus all hardware is for your exclusive use. Usually this situation translates into better website performance, namely faster loading, as well as the possibility of more concurrent visitors simultaneously.
On the other hand, shared hosting refers to a server that is shared by multiple clients / websites. That is, your website shares resources with other websites. In this case a longer load time is expected and the number of simultaneous accesses is more limited.
Given the above, you typically opt for dedicated hosting when a website has high expected traffic. For example, if you are developing a news site for the general public, it might be wise to choose a dedicated hosting. Due to the generic nature of the website, it can be accessed by a large number of people. By contrast, if you are developing an institutional site with expected low traffic, you should opt for shared hosting.
The choice you make will impact the costs involved. As you would expect, dedicated hosting is much more expensive than shared hosting. According to the expected traffic of the website, you can choose which one is the most appropriate, considering that for low traffic websites it will not be worth significantly increasing costs.
To host your website you will be faced with the choice of dedicated or shared hosting. The main difference between both is the performance and concurrent access capability it supports. In dedicated hosting you have hardware for your website only, which is not shared with anyone else. On the other hand, in shared hosting, this is divided by several websites. Thus, in the second case, your website's performance is expected to be lower than in the first situation.