Small businesses can purchase either shared web hosting services or
dedicated web hosting services. In a shared hosting environment,
a small business website will share resources with other websites which are
hosted on the same server. These computer resources include computer disk space,
bandwidth and CPU cycles. In a dedicated environment, your business
website will have a dedicated machine and won't have to share resources
with other websites. This provides greater flexibility and
dependability but it requires that you assume more responsibility.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both shared web hosting and
dedicated web hosting for small businesses. These are summarized in
the table below:
In general, shared hosting plans are adequate for the needs of most small businesses.
A business can always upgrade to a dedicated server should significant problems
be encountered in a shared environment.
A third option called "Virtual Private Hosting" or VPS has recently
emerged and is becoming quite popular. It is a hybrid solution that
provides advantages from the two option previously discussed.
