When to Make the Move to Dedicated Hosting
When business owners and website owners start to have trouble with their website, they might wonder if it’s time to make the move to dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting is truly the best kind of web hosting you can find, with an entire server dedicated solely to your website. Because it’s also the best though, it also comes with a price – quite often, a pretty high price. That high price often scares people off of dedicated hosting and causes them to stay with a hosting package that no longer suits their needs. So, how do you know when to make the move to dedicated hosting?
The biggest sign that it’s time to move to a dedicated server is if your website cannot currently handle the amount of visitors it has. Every time someone visits your website, it needs to be downloaded onto their computer; and it takes a certain amount of bandwidth to do it. Your server will be responsible for that bandwidth and you’ll have a certain allotted amount of bandwidth outlined in your web hosting package.
If however, you’re using VPS or a shared server, that amount of bandwidth could be limited. If that’s the case, your website could not function properly because it simply no longer has the bandwidth to support the amount of traffic it’s receiving. Some web hosts will temporarily shut your website down if you exceed your bandwidth, while others will simply charge you additional fees for using more than your specified allotment.
If your website suddenly starts to do very well, or you’ve recently expanded and know that you’re going to need more resources such as bandwidth, it’s probably time to move to a dedicated server.
There are other times though, that you may find a shared server or VPS too limiting. This is when you want to add certain scripts, software, or other features. Shared servers are extremely limiting in what you can add because you’re sharing the server with everyone else; and not everyone may want that feature on their website. A dedicated server gives you much more control and far more flexibility than either a shared or VPS and when website owners want something these packages don’t offer, they find it’s time to move to dedicated.
One of the features you’ll most likely have (and really enjoy) with a dedicated server that you won’t have with a shared server is root access. Because you’ll never be able to control someone else’s site, you will never have root access with a shared server, and most likely not with VPS either. With a dedicated server though, it’s yours to do whatever you want with and so, you have full access.
Making the move to a dedicated server is a large one, and shouldn’t be entered into lightly. They can be costly and depending on your contract, it can be quite a commitment. However, there is a time when you’ve simply outgrown the needs of VPS or shared hosting. When that’s the case, find a great web host that will give you the dedicated server, and the control, that you’re looking for!
