Back to
Article Directory
 

Has Your Website Outgrown Shared Hosting?

By Sarah Kirk
©2006 All rights reserved

Just when your website becomes successful and, at last, you are getting the sort of traffic you have been dreaming of, you get the dreaded email. Your web host informs you that the high number of visitors is monopolizing the server and unless reduced immediately, your account may be terminated, often without a refund, for breaking its terms of service.

If this story sounds familiar, then you are one of the million  successful website owners who have quickly outgrown traditional shared hosting. So what are your options now? How can your website grow without the fear of your site being terminated? Well, you will be please to know that there are several different options available to you! This article will cover each one so that you can be sure you choose the option that is most suitable for your individual business needs.

Premium hosting benefits
Premium hosting is ideal for those customers that have one very large and/or busy sites, for example, blogs, forums and online businesses. The only sites that are not suitable are audio and video downloading or streaming websites or free/mail providers as these sites could still monopolize the server resources.

If your website has outgrown shared hosting, then premium hosting is definitely the most economical alternative. As most websites are not suitable for a reseller package, premium hosting is a much cheaper alternative than having to get your own server.

Premium hosting is very similar to shared hosing except the packages come with far more bandwidth (traffic) allowance and they are guaranteed to have a maximum number of accounts on each server. The benefit of premium hosting is the fact that you are sharing the server with far less accounts (normally just 30-70), therefore, your website can have high traffic without affecting the server speed or causing downtime.

The other great thing about premium hosting is that it requires no extra technical knowledge and, of course, you still have peace of mind knowing that you still have 24 hour technical support, (of course, this depends on the host you choose). The last benefit of premium hosting is the fact there are several different packages to choose from. This means you only have to pay for the resources that you need at a given time. As soon as your website grows even further, it is very easy to upgrade with only a slight increase in cost, which means your costs are always kept to a minimum.

Reseller hosting benefits
Reseller hosting is designed for individuals who wish to split up the resources allocated in their plan and resell each of these parts individually. Resellers are normally web designers, or customers that have many websites, or entrepreneurs who wish to start their own web host company. (Reseller hosting is also not suitable for audio, video downloading or video streaming websites and free/email providers for the same reason as above.)

With reseller hosting, you can host unlimited domains so you decide how many accounts you want to create and you decide the price you want to resell them for. The great thing about resellers packages is the fact that the web host will continue to provide the technical support to these customers anonymously, which means you don’t have to worry about getting your own staff. Each of the resellers' customers has their own control panel, personalized email and FTP accounts, and fantastico scripts. The reseller can even have their own name servers which makes them look very professional. The other benefit of reselling is that although it requires slightly more knowledge of the industry, there is always technical support close at hand.

Dedicated server benefits
If you get a dedicated server , this means you are the only user of that server. However, as you are not splitting the monthly costs with others users, the actual price is, of course, higher. The price you pay depends on the quality of the server and whether it is managed or not. Always be sure that the server you get is from a reputable company. This option is for websites that are not suitable for the other two options, or for those people who just want more control or higher security for their server. There are two different types of dedicated servers available.

An unmanaged server is generally cheaper, however, you must know first-hand how to run your server, or hire a system administrator that does, as you will be responsible for all the server-side problems and configurations. The second option is a managed server. Although this option still requires technical knowledge, you have peace of mind knowing that your web host will always have technicians there to assist you, which means you do not need to hire your own administrator.

With a dedicated server, you have full root access so you can modify the configuration of the server to whatever suits you best. You can also install any software or scripts that you choose, all of which are not possible with shared hosting. There are many other benefits to having a dedicated server. First, there is reliability. If you are the sole user of a server, you never have to worry that another person's website is going to affect the speed, uptime or security of your server. Often your server will come with more than one CPU, (check with individual web host though), which means your site(s) will have greater performance, pages will load much quicker and your scripts will run much faster. An example would be Dual AMD Opterons, Dual Xeons, Dual Pentium4's and such.

Conclusion
As your website continues to grow, you can now have peace of mind knowing that there is always a suitable alternative available for you.