Are you trying to determine the difference between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, and (more importantly) which approach is best for your website? This post is here to help!
Below, we cover everything you need to know, including defining these two types of hosting, highlighting key differences, summarizing the pros and cons of each, and helping you decide when it makes sense to upgrade to dedicated hosting, as well as exploring some of your other options.
A quick introduction to shared hosting vs dedicated hosting
Let’s start with some general definitions of shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and virtual private server (VPS) hosting, which is a third term you may encounter.
Then, in the following sections, we delve deeper into the differences between shared hosting and dedicated servers, and summarize the pros and cons of both shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
What is shared hosting?
Shared hosting places many websites on the same physical server. This results in the sharing of resources, such as RAM, CPU capacity, storage, and bandwidth.
By sharing resources like this, hosting providers can offer very low prices, which is why shared hosting is typically the most affordable way to host a website.
However, this shared approach can have trade-offs in reduced performance, control, security, and scalability.
In general, shared hosting can be a good option if you’re just getting started and need to keep costs low, but many businesses will be better served by investing in a different type of hosting.
What is dedicated hosting?
Dedicated hosting provides access to an entire physical server dedicated solely to your website. You have the exclusive use of the server’s RAM, CPUs, storage, and bandwidth. You also typically have more control over the server’s configuration, including hardware and software.
Since there is no resource sharing to reduce costs, dedicated hosting will almost always be more expensive than shared hosting.
In exchange for paying more, dedicated hosting can offer better performance, control, security, and scalability, making it a suitable option for serious businesses willing to make a long-term investment in their websites.
What is VPS hosting?
VPS hosting is a third type of hosting that provides exclusive access to a portion of a server’s resources, achieved through isolation and virtualization.
Unlike dedicated hosting, your account doesn’t get access to 100% of the physical server’s resources. However, unlike shared hosting, the resources that you do get are exclusively yours. Your site will also be completely isolated from other sites, so you don’t need to worry about other sites affecting your own, as can happen with shared hosting.
In this way, it sits in between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, which is why we think it’s worth discussing as a third point of comparison. It can offer similar benefits to dedicated hosting, but at a more affordable price point.
Does Kinsta offer shared hosting or dedicated hosting?
Kinsta’s containerized approach to Managed Hosting for WordPress is kind of unique, but it shares the most similarities with VPS hosting.
With Kinsta, your site is completely isolated from other sites, similar to a VPS. Each site “lives” in its own isolated container powered by Google’s C2 and C3D virtual machines and Premium Tier network, which offers fast, scalable performance.
While Kinsta doesn’t offer shared hosting, its containerized approach is still more cost-effective than most dedicated hosting plans, while also providing excellent performance and security for WordPress websites.
Kinsta also offers dedicated hosting for WordPress, which can be beneficial for clients who require the advantages of dedicated hosting.
Kinsta’s containerized approach makes it easier to switch between Managed Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. For example, you could switch your site to a dedicated server before a high-traffic event, such as your Black Friday sale, if you have an e-commerce store.
Then, you can switch back to regular Managed Hosting after the event has finished, and you no longer need the added performance.
Key differences between shared hosting and dedicated hosting
Let’s look at key differences between shared and dedicated hosting.
1. Dedicated hosting provides better performance
Dedicated hosting typically provides performance that is superior to what shared hosting can offer. Your site will load faster for individual visitors, and it will also be able to scale to maintain those fast load times even in high-traffic situations.
This is because your site benefits from all the server’s resources, rather than needing to share them with other accounts.
With shared hosting, you can experience performance slowdowns or website downtime if another account on your shared server uses more than its fair share of resources, which is another performance issue that dedicated hosting can help you avoid.
Of course, there are still “good” dedicated hosting providers and “not-so-good” dedicated hosting providers, so just seeing the term “dedicated” doesn’t guarantee that you’ll experience top-notch performance.
But when done well, dedicated hosting is much more capable of offering fast, scalable performance and can be a good investment if you want the best performance for your website(s).
2. Dedicated hosting offers more control
Dedicated hosting allows more control over your server environment than shared hosting does.
With shared hosting, you can’t change the software or hardware configuration of your server, as this would impact other accounts on the server. For this reason, you pretty much need to accept the configuration “as is” from your shared hosting provider.
Dedicated hosting provides exclusive access to a server’s resources, so you can usually configure it exactly the way you want. This could include choosing specific hardware, the operating system, and services like the web server. You can also install other software packages as needed.
You can also make your own custom configurations, such as running WordPress cron jobs more often or increasing PHP memory limits.
3. Dedicated hosting is completely isolated
With dedicated hosting, your websites are completely isolated from everyone else’s. Not only do you get to utilize 100% of your server’s resources, you also don’t need to worry about other people’s websites affecting your site’s performance or security.
Beyond the technical benefits, the complete isolation that dedicated hosting offers can also help you meet corporate or regulatory compliance rules.
Your organization might have its own policies that require complete isolation. Or, you could be in an industry that requires isolation because of certain government regulations. Either way, achieving compliance can be challenging with shared hosting.
4. Dedicated hosting can be more secure
The shared nature of shared hosting can also pose a security risk, especially if the hosting provider hasn’t done a good job of isolating accounts from one another.
In the worst case, a hacked website or malware from another account could spread to other sites on the server. Some shared hosting providers are more effective than others in isolating accounts and preventing security issues from affecting other accounts. However, with dedicated hosting, it’s not something you need to worry about, as there’s no sharing involved in the first place.
Outside of that, there can also be security issues with external attacks, such as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. If a malicious actor is DDoS’ing the site of another account on your shared server, that could also lead to downtime for your own sites.
With dedicated hosting, you can avoid being the unintended victim of these types of attacks while also being able to implement more robust DDoS protections for your own site.
5. Shared hosting usually costs less
After reviewing the differences above, you may wonder why anyone would choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting.
There’s really just one answer here: cost.
By sharing a server’s resources among multiple accounts, shared hosting can offer significantly lower prices.
All things being equal, shared hosting will generally be the most cost-effective way to host a website.
Are the cost savings associated with shared hosting worth the trade-offs? To address this, let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting and dedicated hosting in more detail.
Pros and cons of shared hosting
Let’s start by looking at the pros and cons of shared hosting.
Pros of shared hosting
- Cheap. The biggest advantage of shared hosting is its low cost. All things being equal, shared hosting will almost always be the cheapest way to host a website.
- Easy to use and beginner-friendly. Because shared hosting is a low-cost option that’s used by a lot of first-time webmasters, most quality shared hosts have created really easy-to-use and beginner-friendly setup and management processes.
Cons of shared hosting
- Can be slow. While the exact performance will depend on your chosen provider, shared hosting will usually have worse performance than other types of hosting.
- “Bad neighbor” effect. Other accounts on your server could negatively affect your own sites, especially if the host isn’t properly isolating accounts.
- Unclear resource limits. Because you don’t know the exact resources that are allocated to your sites, it can be hard to know the exact limits of your plan. This can lead to running out of resources or getting asked to upgrade to a higher plan (this can happen even if your host advertises “unlimited storage” or “unlimited bandwidth”).
- Limited control. You don’t have full control over the server, so you must accept the configuration the host has chosen to implement.
- Can have security issues. If accounts on the shared server aren’t properly isolated, a security issue on another account could affect your own sites.
Pros and cons of dedicated hosting
Next, let’s look at the pros and cons of dedicated hosting.
Pros of dedicated hosting
- Faster performance. When configured properly, dedicated hosting will pretty much always be faster than shared hosting.
- More control over configuration. Dedicated hosting lets you fully configure your server according to your preferences, which means you can adapt it to your website’s unique technical requirements.
- Better security. Because you’re the only account on the server, you don’t have to worry about security issues on other accounts affecting your sites. You’ll also just generally have more control over the security rules on your server.
- Easier scalability. A dedicated server can offer significantly better performance in high-traffic situations because you can utilize all available resources. You can also increase the resources of your dedicated server if you need to scale even further.
- Clear limitations/resources. Dedicated hosting lets you know precisely what resources are available to your site, like RAM, CPU, and storage.
- Easier regulatory or corporate compliance. The fully isolated nature of dedicated hosting can be a crucial aspect of achieving regulatory compliance or adhering to your organization’s corporate policies.
Cons of dedicated hosting
- More expensive. Dedicated hosting almost always costs more than shared hosting.
- Can be more complicated in some situations. Because dedicated hosting provides a whole server to yourself, setup and management can sometimes be more complicated than with shared hosting, especially when purchasing an unmanaged dedicated server. However, if you use a Managed Hosting service like Kinsta’s, dedicated hosting can still be a beginner-friendly option.
When to consider moving to dedicated hosting
While shared hosting can be a good choice when you’re getting started, a lot of organizations will quickly outgrow it.
And you don’t need to jump straight from shared hosting to dedicated hosting, as there are some good intermediary options that can offer some of the benefits of dedicated hosting at a lower price point.
For example, Kinsta’s Managed Hosting for WordPress offers a VPS-like experience where your sites are still completely isolated from other websites. These containerized environments can offer many of the same benefits in terms of performance and security, but at a lower cost than a dedicated hosting server.
At the same time, Kinsta still offers dedicated hosting if you need that, so here are some of the main reasons to use dedicated hosting:
1. You need better/more reliable performance (especially for traffic surges)
One significant reason to consider dedicated hosting is if you require faster and/or more reliable performance, particularly during peak traffic periods.
With dedicated hosting, it’s easier to equip your server with sufficient resources to handle traffic spikes.
With Kinsta’s containerized approach to hosting, you can easily switch from Kinsta’s regular Managed Hosting plans to dedicated hosting plans without expensive or complex migrations.
If you anticipate your site will receive more traffic during a specific period, such as a major sale, consider switching to dedicated hosting for the duration of the event and then seamlessly return to your regular Managed Hosting plans afterward.
2. You need more control over your configuration
Another reason to consider dedicated hosting is if you require more control over your site’s hosting infrastructure due to specific technical requirements.
For example, you may have a WordPress site where page caching is not feasible due to technical reasons, or you might need to install a specific software package on your server.
3. You need to improve regulatory or corporate compliance
Dedicated hosting can also be a great solution if you have more strict regulatory or corporate compliance guidelines that you need to follow.
In some industries or organizations, shared hosting or even VPS hosting just might not be an option from a compliance perspective.
Because dedicated hosting is completely isolated and provides more control over server configuration, it can help you more easily meet your compliance requirements.
How to purchase a dedicated server at Kinsta
As we discussed earlier, Kinsta’s Managed Hosting plans share the most similarities with VPS hosting, thanks to Kinsta’s containerized approach.
However, Kinsta also offers dedicated hosting options for organizations that need them. You can choose to permanently upgrade to dedicated hosting or do it on a temporary basis to plan for periods of high resource usage.
To purchase dedicated hosting at Kinsta, you can reach out to our sales team:
- If you’re already hosting with Kinsta, you should plan for up to three business days to move your site(s) to dedicated hosting.
- If you’re not hosting with Kinsta yet, we recommend reaching out around two weeks before you want to go live on Kinsta’s dedicated hosting.
Summary
Overall, there are significant differences between shared and dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting’s primary attraction is affordability. Dedicated hosting offers improved performance, security, and customization.
But shared hosting and dedicated hosting are not your only choices. An isolated VPS-like approach can be the best option, which is where Kinsta’s Managed Hosting for WordPress can fit in.
If you host with Kinsta, you’ll also have the option of upgrading to dedicated hosting on a temporary or permanent basis. You can find a Kinsta hosting plan to fit your needs.
Kinsta
Steve Bonisteel is a Technical Editor at Kinsta who began his writing career as a print journalist, chasing ambulances and fire trucks. He has been covering Internet-related technology since the late 1990s.
