Shared hosting or dedicated server: which solution for your company ?
How to choose the best hosting for your business ? This choice depends on your needs and must be fully adapted to them. You have two options: use the services of a managed shared hosting (such as GoDaddy, Gandi, Ionos, Platform.SH), a dedicated virtual infrastructure (whether on VM / VPS or PaaS). Find out which solution is right for your business.
Why and when to opt for a shared hosting ?
The simplest and most economical solution
Shared hosting refers to one or more servers shared with other users. On the same machine or a cluster of machines, many sites can be hosted. This solution is the most economical, because it does not require any maintenance costs. The host takes care of it as well as the security and the backup of the data.
The limits of shared hosting
You depend on the seriousness of the host for security, backup of your data and availability
Indeed, even if the economic aspect and the absence of maintenance can be very attractive, you cannot really control where your data is stored, if your backups are really made on a delocalized site and if there is a real partitioning of your data.
In 2021, the OVH site in Strasbourg suffered a fire that strongly impacted the French web (one third of the French web was paralyzed). Many people were surprised that the 4 data centers were located next to each other. Many customers did not take the time to read the fine print on the contract and conditions of their hosting.
This hosting is best suited for sites with constant traffic
The size of the server or server cluster should be able to handle the average traffic volume of all clients on the server. If several sites have traffic peaks at the same time, this can impact the performance of all the sites in the cluster. The logic is similar to that of insurance companies: the provider assumes that not everyone will have a peak at the same time.
However, a too long loading time negatively influences SEO. When a page takes too long to open, the visitor leaves the site. This leads to a high bounce rate and few conversions. It is also a bad signal to search engine algorithms. A high bounce rate can be interpreted as a lack of quality content.
Shared hosting is more for standard needs
Many companies are required to adhere to security and data management standards for reasons of compliance with the rules of a group (PRA / PCA), with certifications (ISO 27001 for example) and these shared hostings do not necessarily meet these specific needs.
Similarly, if your website is the heart of your business (this is the case for example if you make more than 50% of your sales on your ecommerce site), it is not necessarily in your interest to opt for shared hosting and it is better to invest in dedicated hosting.
In conclusion, read carefully the contracts that bind you to your shared hosting company to know what SLAs and service guarantees are offered.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a dedicated server ?
A dedicated hosting is for the use of a single company. You can use 100% of the resources you have subscribed to.
Nevertheless, dedicated hosting requires specialized personnel to configure and maintain its operation. Its use implies to perform regular backups and security updates indispensable. With PaaS (Platform as a Service), a large part of the maintenance of the resources is delegated to the hosting company. This requires fewer resources at the management level.
A VM, or virtual machine, commonly referred to as VPS is a virtual server hosted in the cloud. Its main advantages are its flexibility, scalability and extensibility.
This type of hosting is fast and reliable. It allows a redundancy of the servers, which limits the losses of data. Thus, there is no interruption of the web services and the access to the applications is maintained.
This cloud solution allows you to achieve better performance. In fact, the VM is ideal for websites, intranet and other high-traffic, fast-moving applications.
However, keep in mind that each increase in VM size can result in a big cost increase. Therefore, you need to make sure that you follow a FinOps approach to keep a good control of its costs. It is the financial control of cloud costs that allows you to find the right balance between the investments necessary for the performance of your applications and the optimization of your costs.
To secure your dedicated infrastructure, many Cloud first solutions exist and can easily be implemented such ase Cloudflare.
How to choose the right type of accommodation ?
Choosing the right hosting for your business means choosing the one that fits your needs and usage. Ask yourself what your IT availability needs are. Administration, migration, maintenance? Do you need managed services or manage the server internally ?
A shared hosting meets the basic needs for sites with little traffic. It is suitable if you have a small budget, but remains very limited. Dedicated hosting is better suited for more specific or important needs. However, it also has its limits and a significant cost.
To choose the right type of hosting, you have to anticipate certain needs that may grow according to your strategy. A cloud hosting offer dedicated hosting is the most flexible hosting solution, however it is important to keep costs and security under control.
Do not hesitate to be accompanied by experts in cloud hosting with Castelis.
