E-commerce and Online Business Reference

Aric Watson asked:




1. Flexibility

A dedicated server gives you control – the flexibility do use the server as you wish. With a shared hosting plan we have to work to be sure that all the clients hosted on a server “play nice” with each other. Not so with a dedicated hosting client – then there’s only you using the server, and we can give you a lot more flexibility to do what you wish!

2. Power

On a shared hosting environment, you have to share the resources of the server with the other hosting clients. While this is fine for a small website, as your website grows in traffic it begins to need greater amounts of bandwidth, disk space, processor time, etc. A dedicated server lets you wring the most use out of the server, since no resources have to be reserved for other clients.

3. Ecommerce

While ecommerce is possible on non-dedicated server, it’s usually a good idea to use a dedicated server for your ecommerce website. This is because with a dedicated server, you have greater security. There are no other clients running websites on your server, only you. Control gives security, and security is always important when doing business online!

4. SEO

SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” is the art of making sure your website is well represented in the search results for search engines like Google and MSN. There are many, many different factors that govern this – and each search engine is different. But one thing that can only help your SEO efforts is to be sure that your website is not located in a “bad neighborhood.” In a shared hosting environment, it’s possible that another client running on the same server as you could be doing something that the search engines don’t like – distributing viruses and malware, posting spam, etc. Because your site is on the same server, it’s possible that the you may be unintentionally affected by the other client’s bad actions. Being on a separate machine and a separate IP address prevents this.

5. Be Prepared

You never know when your site may take off! And while this is definitely a good problem to have, if your site experiences a sudden huge surge of traffic, it’s much easier to ensure that it stays online if you have a dedicated server. Not only can a dedicated server use 100% of it’s resources to deal with a traffic surge, it’s also easier to add more servers to create a server cluster if the original site is on a dedicated server. So plan for the future and be ready for success!

Web Hosting Ghostwriter asked:




In today’s business economy, it is important to have a complete solution that not only compensates for your current operations, but supports the growth of your business into the future as well. If the internet is the core of your business, a conventional web hosting solution might not be able to provide the level of control and flexibility you require, at least from a long-term perspective.  Because of this, there just may come a time when you need to strongly consider dedicated hosting.

What is Dedicated Hosting?

To give you a better understanding of dedicated hosting, I’ll first give a quick brief on conventional web hosting, better known as shared hosting. This is the type of environment where you are literally sharing server space and critical resources with other website owners. This could be tens, hundreds or even thousands of people. Dedicated hosting you could say, is the exact option. As the name implies, this is a situation where the entire server is dedicated to your business. With an entire machine at your disposal, you have enough server capacity to host one or multiple websites. Aside from disk space, you also have an abundance of bandwidth along with enough RAM and CPU to make your website perform like a champ. Whereas shared hosting leaves you limited, a dedicated server opens up the floor, providing you with more than enough room to work with.

Benefits of Dedicated Hosting

A dedicated server only makes sense for the large corporation or emerging small to medium-sized business, delivering benefits that simply can’t be provided on other platforms. Below I’ll touch on some of the key benefits of dedicated hosting:

Enhanced Stability and Performance

With dedicated hosting, you are pretty much assured a better performance. In this environment, there are no other sites on the server to leach off your disk space, bandwidth and other essential resources. This means you can enjoy a maximum uptime with a high level of performance your visitors are sure to appreciate.

Extreme Flexibility

One of the biggest attractions of the dedicated server is flexibility. On a shared server you are restricted and typically limited to the resources and tools the web host provides. With dedicated hosting you call the shots, able to incorporate the software applications and technologies you desire. The options are endless, ranging from the control panel and operating system to programming languages and database systems.

Enhanced Security

A dedicated server offers unparalleled security, an attribute that is invaluable these days. This hosting solution gives you the option of implementing the security protocols and mechanisms able to provide your business with the best protection. You can install firewalls, anti-virus solutions, DDoS protection software – the possibilities are endless when it comes to network security. Simply put – a dedicated server can be as secure as you make it.

Though more expensive than shared web hosting, dedicated hosting is worth every penny to the business that demands the utmost in control and flexibility. Throw in enhanced stability and security and it becomes a solution your flourishing business just might not be able to do without.

Time for a dedicated server?  Check out the dedicated hosting packages offered by HostGator.  The Gator has dedicated servers available in both Windows and Linux flavors, giving you the best in server hardware and guaranteed network resources.