When to Switch to Dedicated Hosting
If you’ve had a website for a while, you might be wondering when to switch to dedicated hosting. The thought of dedicated hosting tends to arise, too, after doing a bit of research on the whole subject of hosting. You could spend hours reading about the various types of hosting available, but you will, inevitably, wind up at the same conclusion eventually – a conclusion that’s really more of a question. Is dedicated hosting a good idea?
What to Know
Dedicated hosting is, bar none, the fastest way to make your clients happy. How’s that? When you go the dedicated route, you are providing any visitor to your site with a super fast load time. That means that getting information from your site will be faster, and that, in turn, means that finding what they landed on your site for is quicker. So, you see, it’s all related.
Choosing dedicated hosting over shared hosting comes with many different benefits too. Like what? Well, not only do you not have to share your speeds with any other website, but you will also have a lot more control over what happens on your site with a dedicated hosting package. Hosting companies that offer dedicated options can set up a user-friendly control panel that you can log into and access at any time. This means that you have more control if you choose a dedicated hosting package.
What About Costs?
If you’ve been researching hosting option, you’ve probably noticed that dedicated hosting packages come with a much higher price tag. Well, that’s true. You do have to pay more to be the only website on a server, but that’s not such a huge surprise given the fact that you will have one entire server to yourself. So, yes, dedicated hosting is more expensive.
You do have to look at the big picture, though. That overall expense can save you a ton of money in the long run – especially if you’re currently running a website that consistently frustrates visitors due to lagging speeds. Those people will likely just look for another company like yours – with a much faster site. So, you see, there’s no real savings in choosing shared hosting.
When to Switch
If you’ve just started a blog and don’t have any site visitors yet, you probably won’t get much benefit from a dedicated hosting plan. If you have just started a business, on the other hand, dedicated hosting should be your top choice from the start. Why? Because switching hosts can be troublesome, and you can save a lot of that trouble if you just aim for dedicated hosting from the start.
Here’s how to know when to switch:
- You are getting thousands of hits per day.
- Visitors to your site are complaining about slow speeds.
- You use Google Analytics, and you’ve noticed that people are bouncing off of your site quickly (okay, this might be due to other things too, but a slow site is a good reason for that bounce).
- You want more control over your site.
Go the Managed Route
Now that you have a better idea of when to choose dedicated hosting, you may be wondering just how you’re going to use that control panel or what else you need to know in order to set up dedicated hosting. Well, you don’t have to hire a complete IT team in order to make it all work. The only thing you really need to do is look for a managed dedicated hosting package.
You can still log into your site, but a hosting company will handle any problem that arises, so you don’t have to worry about fixing stuff. If you do have an IT team, you don’t need the managed hosting package.
In the End
It’s hard to think of a company site that wouldn’t benefit from a dedicated hosting option. If you’re wondering when to switch, consider making that move now. Sure, it will cost you more at the start, but you will save a ton of money when it comes to retaining site visitors.
Need help with a dedicated hosting plan? Not sure what hosting company to choose? Check out SiteGeek.com for additional hosting details.