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What do you do when you’ve created a successful web site, one that is so successful that your current hosting plan just is not up to the job and your hosting company are not too pleased with you?

It is a nice predicament to have, but a dilemma just the same!

When customers begin finding that they can not get access to your web site because it’s been taken offline because of high resource usage, or that the response time is glacially slow, they typically give up, visit your competitors web site and purchase from them instead.

When that happens it’s time to start exploring dedicated web hosting!

Before you dive straight into dedicated web hosting the first thing you must do is to take a practical study of your existing web business and do a thorough analysis of both your current needs and your projected future requirements. Obviously you may be anticipating growth over the approaching years, so make sure that you think about the expected increase in demand when working out your requirements.

You may be wondering why you mustn’t just go for a larger and better shared hosting plan? The problem is that with shared hosting your web site is sharing the identical hardware resources as numerous other sites, therefore if those sites are employing a lot of system resources then your web site is going to suffer. Do you actually want to be in competition with the other sites on your server for precious resources that you need to keep your website running smoothly? Or would you rather have them all to yourself, guaranteeing your customers the best experience and making certain that your site can keep up and running 24/7?

In fact with dedicated hosting there are other benefits, like having way more control over the environment that your web site runs in, the ability to install and run your own software, and not having to stress about what you utilize your disk space for.

But whereas a dedicated server might be the ideal solution for any business that is serious about it’s net presence it’s not without it’s drawbacks. As an example, there’s the cost issue. Historically a dedicated server has been an expensive choice that only big corporations or the successful and profitable businesses might afford. Thankfully that’s no longer the case, and while there are still a lot of pricey dedicated hosting packages on offer there is also a lot of firms providing cheap dedicated hosting as well.

Maybe the most important downside is that of support. A lot of dedicated server packages provide you with the server and leave you to run it as if the server was in your offices. This means that you’re responsible for just about every technical facet of running the server, and if you are not technical then this can be a problem. There are a number of solutions to this problem including recruiting somebody to assist you, or, choosing managed server hosting, where the hosting company can handle technical aspects for you, but usually at an increased price.

By far the most affordable way to get your website on the internet these days is to use what is called shared hosting. Shared hosting is where a net hosting company rents you a certain amount of disk space in which to store the files that comprise your website and permit you a certain amount of bandwidth (ie. the data transfered between your site and your guests browsers) in exchange for a monthly fee. Typically speaking, the more you pay the more web space and bandwidth you’ll be given.

There are even deals around where you are offered ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth for a absurdly tiny sum of cash every month. A lot of individuals are pleased with what they get, however many others have discovered when actually trying to use large amounts of space or bandwidth that if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is!

One of the features of a shared hosting account is that, as it’s name implies, you are sharing the disk space and bandwidth with lots of other users. As I am certain many will appreciate, when an application is thrashing your hard disk on your own PC, or using up a lot of memory, then your PC slows down considerably and can seem to grind to a halt at times. Well, this situation is pretty much the same with shared hosting. You’ll find yourself on a server with other users who have memory or CPU intensive applications, or popular sites that have tons of guests, which means heaps of disk activity. The end result is that the responsiveness of your website suffers.

An additional downside with shared hosting is that you will be unaware of who exactly you are sharing with. If you discover that your web site drops suddenly in Google that might be for the reason that you have done something Google does not approve of. On the other hand it may be that the IP address you’re sharing with each and every one the other sites on your server has been identified as a source of spam or malware.

So what is the answer?

Well many folks are OK with taking the risks associated with shared hosting, but for others some kind of cheap dedicated hosting provides an occasional price solution to their problems. You will need to come to a decision if you would like Linux server hosting or Windows server hosting, but that decision should be driven by the applications that you need to run, as they can almost certainly be Windows only or Linux only.

A virtual dedicated server is the next step up from shared hosting and can cost you a touch more money. With a virtual shared server you still will not have a physical server all to yourself, but you will have far more control over your hosting environment and you’ll eliminate just about every one of the problems related to shared hosting, and you will have your own IP address. For the small amount extra (it will be typically around $twenty – $30 a month extra) that a virtual dedicated server costs this is a worthwhile investment.