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07-12-2007, 07:15 PM
The tip for this week asks the question: what are the differences between a shared, virtual and a dedicated web hosting plan? For those who may not be familiar with the term "web hosting plan" this really means "website". In other words, when you are ready to setup your website, what kind of website should you choose? Shared? Dedicated? Virtual?
Below I explain the differences and point out the pros and cons of each type.
(1) Shared Server - A shared server is a server that holds multiple websites. How many websites depends on the cumulative load placed on the server (CPU load) from all of the websites. The web hosting company will monitor the serve loads to make sure it can adequately service all of the websites which are installed on it. Although the maxium server load percentage limit will vary from provider to provider, the general idea is that the number of websites installed on one box will not exceed the number that will cause the server to "bog down" to the point of providing inadequate performance across all of the websites.
Because all web hosting providers monitor their server CPU loads, most will not reveal exactly how many websites are installed on any given shared server if you ask them that question. This is most likely because the number is large and would give a prospective customer concern - however, as long as their sever loads are monitored (which they are) it makes little difference how many websites are installed on one box.
Fortunately, a shared server works extremely well in practice. By allowing multiple websites to exist on one server, the monthly cost for a website can be dramatically reduced: $5.00 a month for an entry level shared website is not uncommon.
You can get a Windows or Linux server. I'm often asked which should I get? And I tell anyone this: if you are going to program your website using the .ASP language then you need a Windows server otherwise, go with Linux.
The lower cost is the big plus for shared web hosting. So what's the down side? The down side is that because you are sharing a server with many other web businesses, you do not have full control over the server to do what you want. For example, you do not have what is called "root" access. This is sort of like having Admin rights on your home Windows XP system.
There are many things you can do to your website but there are also many things that you are not allowed to do. You are provided with a control panel of some kind that will allow you to make approved changes that affect only your website. For example, you can create and configure your mail accounts through the control panel. One of the first things you will want to do is create a 'sales' email account so when people email you at sales@yourwebsite.com you can control where it goes - you can have it go into the inbox of a webmail account for 'sales' and/or you can forward it to another email address.
For most businesses, a shared web hosting account can work fine. If your business is very successful and is generating a lot of traffic, you might find yourself bumping up against or exceeding your monthly bandwidth quota.
Let's take a minute and talk about disk space and bandwidth. When you choose a shared hosting plan, you will also be choosing how much disk space and how much bandwidth you will be allowed to use each month. For example, with a $5.00 a month hosting plan, you may be allowed 5GB of disk space and 250GB of bandwidth. $10.00 a month might get you 100GB of disk space and 1000GB of bandwidth. Keep in mind these amounts (disk space and bandwidth) will vary greatly from provider to provider so you will need to shop around.
But also keep in mind that price alone is not and should not be the only factor to consider. There are other, even more important, things to consider when shopping for a web hosting provider but that topic is beyond the scope of this weeks tip. I think we'll save that one for a future article.
Bandwidth may turn into more of a problem than disk space because you don't have as much control over it. Bandwidth primarily is the measurement of how much data flows between your website and your visitors browsers. If you have a lot of people visiting your website you're going to use more bandwidth. Like disk space, if you exceed your bandwidth, you can upgrade to the next higher web hosting plan. Although this costs more, if you need to do it because of bandwidth, that also means your website is getting popular and (hopefully) you're making money from all that traffic!
As a business grows, it's traffic (bandwidth) will eventually exceed even the most robust shared web hosting plan for bandwidth and that means it will be time to upgrade to a Dedicated server - which brings us to our next topic: Dedicated servers.
(2) Dedicated Server - A dedicated server is a sever that only your website has installed on it. You 'own' the whole box and share it with no other website businesses. Although dedicated servers can be expensive, businesses who find themselves needing one usually have the traffic and income to afford it.
You would find yourself needing one if your disk space and/or bandwidth exceeded what was available on a shared server. Dedicated servers can start at around $79.00 a month and go up to hundreds of Dollars a month. Usually when you purchase a dedicated hosting plan, you are responsible for all software loading and updates, etc. This means you need to know what you are doing on the server.
Hosting providers can also provide what is called "Managed Accounts" where the hosting provider will do all of the needed software installs, updates, etc. for you - you are still responsible for all software license costs and fees (if any) but this monthly managed account service cost is in addition to the monthly cost for the dedicated web hosting plan itself. There are some hosting providers who will provide managed service as part of the monthly web hosting plan cost but most hosting providers do charge extra for managed service.
There are however, other reasons you might need a dedicated server. In the Unix world, Linux servers are the most popular websites and there is a thing called a Cron job associated with Linux. Cron jobs are like batch or background jobs that run at certain times controlled by you. A friend of mine owns a website business that needs to download weather images hourly. He has created Cron jobs to do this. So every hour 14 Cron jobs kick off and down load the weather images needed to support his web business.
Cron jobs can take up CPU time (resources). He was on a shared server until the hosting company informed him that his 14 Cron jobs were hogging most of the CPU time and because he was on a shared server, this wasn't going to be permitted to continue. He had two choices: cancel the Cron jobs or move his website to a dedicated server when he would own ALL of the CPU resources. Since his web business needed the Cron jobs, he would have to move his business to a dedicated server at a higher monthly cost. And not all shared web hosting plans permit cron jobs to run at all.
Before leaving dedicated servers, I'd like to touch on one more business that may cause you to have to go to a dedicated server: adult web hosting. While many hosting companies will allow an adult website to be hosted with them on a shared server, it's a good idea to steer clear of such hosting companies. Why? Because adult websites become the targets of DOS (Denial of Service) attacks to bring the website down. If they succeed and it's on a shared server, it will also bring down all of the other web businesses on that server.
If your business is on such a server, then your website will also be unavailable to your customers or visitors. This is a situation where hosting companies who will take an adult website on a shared server don't have their customers best interest at heart - those hosting companies who will take an adult business but only on a dedicated server, have their customers best interest at heart!
And finally to conclude my tip this week on web hosting plans I want to cover a kind of web hosting plan that falls between a shared host and a dedicated host: they are called virtual servers.
(3) Virtual Dedicated Server - A virtual dedicated server (VDS), sometimes also called a virtual private server (VPS) is a server which has it's operating system and hard disk divided or partitioned, into separate, smaller sub-servers.
Usually, a much smaller number of web businesses are permitted on one box compared to a shared server so there is better CPU performance for each website (although not as good as on a dedicated server). The big advantage is that each partition is completely isolated from the other partitions (websites) and therefore, you can have root access (including remote rebooting) just as if it were a dedicated server - but you're still sharing the CPU with other businesses.
Price is the main advantage for VDS/VPS servers. Monthly prices can start around $39.00 a month. Like dedicated servers, some hosting companies treat VDS/VPS servers like dedicated servers as far as hands-on technical support goes. Meaning, you could be responsible for all software installs and updates unless you've purchased a managed account service plan.
Below I explain the differences and point out the pros and cons of each type.
(1) Shared Server - A shared server is a server that holds multiple websites. How many websites depends on the cumulative load placed on the server (CPU load) from all of the websites. The web hosting company will monitor the serve loads to make sure it can adequately service all of the websites which are installed on it. Although the maxium server load percentage limit will vary from provider to provider, the general idea is that the number of websites installed on one box will not exceed the number that will cause the server to "bog down" to the point of providing inadequate performance across all of the websites.
Because all web hosting providers monitor their server CPU loads, most will not reveal exactly how many websites are installed on any given shared server if you ask them that question. This is most likely because the number is large and would give a prospective customer concern - however, as long as their sever loads are monitored (which they are) it makes little difference how many websites are installed on one box.
Fortunately, a shared server works extremely well in practice. By allowing multiple websites to exist on one server, the monthly cost for a website can be dramatically reduced: $5.00 a month for an entry level shared website is not uncommon.
You can get a Windows or Linux server. I'm often asked which should I get? And I tell anyone this: if you are going to program your website using the .ASP language then you need a Windows server otherwise, go with Linux.
The lower cost is the big plus for shared web hosting. So what's the down side? The down side is that because you are sharing a server with many other web businesses, you do not have full control over the server to do what you want. For example, you do not have what is called "root" access. This is sort of like having Admin rights on your home Windows XP system.
There are many things you can do to your website but there are also many things that you are not allowed to do. You are provided with a control panel of some kind that will allow you to make approved changes that affect only your website. For example, you can create and configure your mail accounts through the control panel. One of the first things you will want to do is create a 'sales' email account so when people email you at sales@yourwebsite.com you can control where it goes - you can have it go into the inbox of a webmail account for 'sales' and/or you can forward it to another email address.
For most businesses, a shared web hosting account can work fine. If your business is very successful and is generating a lot of traffic, you might find yourself bumping up against or exceeding your monthly bandwidth quota.
Let's take a minute and talk about disk space and bandwidth. When you choose a shared hosting plan, you will also be choosing how much disk space and how much bandwidth you will be allowed to use each month. For example, with a $5.00 a month hosting plan, you may be allowed 5GB of disk space and 250GB of bandwidth. $10.00 a month might get you 100GB of disk space and 1000GB of bandwidth. Keep in mind these amounts (disk space and bandwidth) will vary greatly from provider to provider so you will need to shop around.
But also keep in mind that price alone is not and should not be the only factor to consider. There are other, even more important, things to consider when shopping for a web hosting provider but that topic is beyond the scope of this weeks tip. I think we'll save that one for a future article.
Bandwidth may turn into more of a problem than disk space because you don't have as much control over it. Bandwidth primarily is the measurement of how much data flows between your website and your visitors browsers. If you have a lot of people visiting your website you're going to use more bandwidth. Like disk space, if you exceed your bandwidth, you can upgrade to the next higher web hosting plan. Although this costs more, if you need to do it because of bandwidth, that also means your website is getting popular and (hopefully) you're making money from all that traffic!
As a business grows, it's traffic (bandwidth) will eventually exceed even the most robust shared web hosting plan for bandwidth and that means it will be time to upgrade to a Dedicated server - which brings us to our next topic: Dedicated servers.
(2) Dedicated Server - A dedicated server is a sever that only your website has installed on it. You 'own' the whole box and share it with no other website businesses. Although dedicated servers can be expensive, businesses who find themselves needing one usually have the traffic and income to afford it.
You would find yourself needing one if your disk space and/or bandwidth exceeded what was available on a shared server. Dedicated servers can start at around $79.00 a month and go up to hundreds of Dollars a month. Usually when you purchase a dedicated hosting plan, you are responsible for all software loading and updates, etc. This means you need to know what you are doing on the server.
Hosting providers can also provide what is called "Managed Accounts" where the hosting provider will do all of the needed software installs, updates, etc. for you - you are still responsible for all software license costs and fees (if any) but this monthly managed account service cost is in addition to the monthly cost for the dedicated web hosting plan itself. There are some hosting providers who will provide managed service as part of the monthly web hosting plan cost but most hosting providers do charge extra for managed service.
There are however, other reasons you might need a dedicated server. In the Unix world, Linux servers are the most popular websites and there is a thing called a Cron job associated with Linux. Cron jobs are like batch or background jobs that run at certain times controlled by you. A friend of mine owns a website business that needs to download weather images hourly. He has created Cron jobs to do this. So every hour 14 Cron jobs kick off and down load the weather images needed to support his web business.
Cron jobs can take up CPU time (resources). He was on a shared server until the hosting company informed him that his 14 Cron jobs were hogging most of the CPU time and because he was on a shared server, this wasn't going to be permitted to continue. He had two choices: cancel the Cron jobs or move his website to a dedicated server when he would own ALL of the CPU resources. Since his web business needed the Cron jobs, he would have to move his business to a dedicated server at a higher monthly cost. And not all shared web hosting plans permit cron jobs to run at all.
Before leaving dedicated servers, I'd like to touch on one more business that may cause you to have to go to a dedicated server: adult web hosting. While many hosting companies will allow an adult website to be hosted with them on a shared server, it's a good idea to steer clear of such hosting companies. Why? Because adult websites become the targets of DOS (Denial of Service) attacks to bring the website down. If they succeed and it's on a shared server, it will also bring down all of the other web businesses on that server.
If your business is on such a server, then your website will also be unavailable to your customers or visitors. This is a situation where hosting companies who will take an adult website on a shared server don't have their customers best interest at heart - those hosting companies who will take an adult business but only on a dedicated server, have their customers best interest at heart!
And finally to conclude my tip this week on web hosting plans I want to cover a kind of web hosting plan that falls between a shared host and a dedicated host: they are called virtual servers.
(3) Virtual Dedicated Server - A virtual dedicated server (VDS), sometimes also called a virtual private server (VPS) is a server which has it's operating system and hard disk divided or partitioned, into separate, smaller sub-servers.
Usually, a much smaller number of web businesses are permitted on one box compared to a shared server so there is better CPU performance for each website (although not as good as on a dedicated server). The big advantage is that each partition is completely isolated from the other partitions (websites) and therefore, you can have root access (including remote rebooting) just as if it were a dedicated server - but you're still sharing the CPU with other businesses.
Price is the main advantage for VDS/VPS servers. Monthly prices can start around $39.00 a month. Like dedicated servers, some hosting companies treat VDS/VPS servers like dedicated servers as far as hands-on technical support goes. Meaning, you could be responsible for all software installs and updates unless you've purchased a managed account service plan.