Why a Dedicated Server Should Be Your Web Hosting Solution

Your website is one of the most important assets. It is the first impression most receive of your business, either by finding you via a Google search or by interacting with one of your social media profiles and clicking over to your site.

What happens when someone is excited to search your site and they sit there waiting for your pages to load. What do you think goes through their mind? They become very frustrated — I can promise you that.

Often times they will leave because they don’t want to wait around. If the first page is slow they then imagine every other page loading slow as a pig. Nobody wants to waste time waiting. Consumers are impatient. They want things now.

If they do leave they are very unlikely to every return. To help prevent that you should consider moving your website to a dedicated server. According to one London app development firm, here is why.

The cost is a small price to pay for up-time.

Most people only think about the cost when they consider what web hosting option to go with. They assume they are all created equally, but this is far from the truth. There is a huge difference between shared hosting that costs you $5 a month and a dedicated server that runs you $220 a month.

Most businesses assume they are the same and that they are making a wise business decision by going with the more affordable option. In the long run they lose more money than they save.

“If you are using a cheap hosting option that goes off line often you are missing out on sales and leads,” advises Oliver James, CEO of top web design agency Perth Web Design. “Not to mention the bad image it places on your business. Would you go back to a website that was down? Probably not.”

You don’t have to worry about bad neighbors.

When you use a shared hosting package your website sits on the same server as hundreds of other websites. Often times there will be some spammers and if they are doing shady things it can impact the performance of the server.

“If someone sharing a server with you is running spam software that uses a lot of the resources it can cause it to go down, taking all the websites hosted on the server down as well,” says Andrew Tran of Therapy Blanket, makers of the best weighted blanket. “

These bad neighbors are not good for business. Any time your website is down it’s missed opportunities. For e-commerce businesses this is lost revenue. It’s never good to have your site offline. A dedicated server is much more reliable in terms of uptime.

Dedicated IP address is better for SEO.

Along with a dedicated server comes a dedicated IP address. This is basically another way to contact your website. If you type the IP into the URL address bar it will bring up your website. When you share an IP address with other websites it can ‘connect’ your site to spammers.

If you are serious about SEO (you should be) then you want to do everything possible to protect your website and show Google that your website is a trusted source of information. Little things like having a dedicated IP address separate you from others and allow you to have more control.

It may seem silly, but the little precautions all add up. “Over time the little things you are pro-active about will directly contribute to the increased authority and trust of your website,” says Irene McConnell of Arielle Executive, a company that helps writing executive resumes. “If you have long-term plans then you should want to do everything possible to preserve your website and domain.”

Full control over the plugins and apps you use.

There are some restrictions when it comes to shared hosting. GoDaddy for example, has a WordPress hosting service that doesn’t allow you to have full control over what plugins you install on your website.

So, you could hire a developer to create a specific plugin for your needs and you wouldn’t be able to install it on your website. That is insane and just one of many reasons why shared hosting is not the best option.

“When you use a dedicated server to host your website you have full control over what you install on it,” says Jeannie Hill of Hill Web Marketing, an agency that helps business owners understand how Google answers user’s questions. You are the only website occupying the resources. If you want to install a piece of software, go ahead. You have full control.

More security.

As your business scales you will have different security requirements. Large corporations, for example, may have a lot of sensitive data and with all the recent hacks you want to make sure everything is as safe as possible.

“Shared servers are very risky,” says April Gillmore of ClickFirst Marketing. If you are storing data, then you want to make sure you have your own server and can build custom security features. You will probably need to hire a tech consultant to make sure you have the proper firewalls and protection in place.

Scalable as your traffic grows.

“If you are using shared hosting you are very limited as to how you can scale the server,” says Loren Taylor of Soothing Company. “In fact, you cannot scale it at all. A dedicated server that you have complete control over is a different story.”

There are no limitations, as you can scale out as large as you need. Think about the server set-ups Facebook and Instagram have to handle their traffic. When you need more resources, you simply add them. Need more memory? Not a problem. Need more storage? Done. If you create a popular blog and it starts to slow down and push the limits of your server you can easily add more memory and space. You can add more machines and hardware to build a server that will always meet your needs no matter how large your website becomes