Every business needs to have a website these days, and it’s also becoming more and more common for individuals to have websites for their personal résumés and portfolios. In any scenario, the web is a dangerous place, and there are certain ways that things need to be done in order for you to protect yourself and your visitors.
Dedicated servers are not always necessary, but can be crucially important if you have any important data stored on your website. Why are dedicated servers such a good choice in these scenarios? First, let’s examine exactly what a dedicated server is and how it’s different from other types of servers.
What Is a Dedicated Server?
In general, when people set up websites for the first time and they aren’t using it for professional services, they’ll look for the least expensive option above all else. Web hosting companies always use shared hosting for these options, and that means that your websites data is stored on the same physical hard drives as data from other websites. This puts you in danger because your website is vulnerable to attacks on other sites that are shared on the same server. So even if you have a good reputation, you could be sharing that space with other websites that do not.
On the contrary, dedicated servers do not share the same physical space with other websites. Instead, you have your own server that is used to host your website, and your website alone. This has many advantages which we’ll now discuss.
Speed and Reliability
When you’re sharing a server with multiple other websites, your site could suffer from intermittently poor speeds. Even if you have very little traffic to your site, other sites that are sharing your bandwidth might have a sudden spike in traffic, causing your website to run slowly, or even be completely unavailable at times. This is a very common problem for websites that use shared hosting, and it is something that you should strongly consider. If you need for your website to be available at all times, dedicated hosting would be a much better option. Shared hosting could lead you to miss out on sales, or opportunities to gather leads.
In contrast, dedicated hosting does not share these risks. You don’t have to worry about intermittently slow speeds, or complete unavailability. Dedicated hosting is the best way to ensure that visitors will always be able to visit your site without having any problems. In addition, there are some safety advantages to using dedicated hosting.
Safety
As mentioned in the introduction to this article, shared hosting has its risks due to the fact that you share storage with other websites. If there is an attack on one of these websites, your site will also be unavailable. In addition, your data is more likely to be stolen because of vulnerabilities that are out of your control. Beyond that, dedicated servers can also be used to store data that you would otherwise need to store at your own home. This is a much safer and more reliable solution if you cannot afford to lose that data. In addition to having your own backups in your home, you may want to purchase a server to retain that information.
