Most people assume that by signing up for a hosting plan you get your own IP address, but that is not the case. In truth, you need to subscribe to a dedicated IP to do this. But what is a dedicated IP address?
Most hosting packages provide you with an IP address that is used by several other clients. This means that the bandwidth of the Internet traffic is spread across multiple websites.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the difference between a dedicated IP address and a shared hosting account and explain whether getting a dedicated IP address is worth it or not.
What is a dedicated IP address in hosting?
Most of the typical hosting plans come with a low price tag because the hosting company can host multiple hosting accounts on the same IP address. This means that one server is essentially dedicated to several different clients.
Dedicated IP is different, which means you will have your own IP or server dedicated to your single account. A dedicated IP address is more expensive because the hosting provider has to reserve more server resources for just one client, but this usually has a number of benefits.
What are the benefits of using a dedicated IP address for your website?
For the average customer, running a shared hosting plan is a great place to start, but upgrading offers some benefits. Let’s start with the negative flaws of the overall plan.
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If you have a shared data plan, your IP address will be available to other customers. Your privacy and account details are safe and there is no way to know who is giving you the IP address. But using a public IP address poses a risk to your site’s performance.
First, since there can be multiple inbound websites on a single server, bandwidth needs to be managed. Peak top upload and download speeds are often capped at very specific levels with these hosting plans to keep the servers from getting overwhelmed.
Unfortunately, this means that if you encounter a surge in traffic, for example, from a viral post or a well-performing article on Google, your traffic may be limited. Users may have to wait longer for your site to load so that your site does not create problems for other clients using the same IP address.
This can have a huge negative impact on your user retention. Page speed rating is important. Therefore, switching to a dedicated IP address can prevent this issue from occurring.
Another negative downside to using a shared hosting plan is that you can risk disrupting your website from other customers.
As we explained above, website traffic is limited, which means that if everything is working as expected, you shouldn’t see any major performance issues if a client using your IP address suddenly has a traffic spike. But technology does not always work as expected, and there is no guarantee that other customer actions will not cause problems.
One example would be if a client using your IP address is subjected to a DDOS attack Since you are using a shared server with this client, your website may have connection issues.
Another problem with shared hosting is that it’s not just the server’s network speeds that are shared. You must also share other system resources, including storage. Because of this, shared IP hosting often limits the size of the user’s storage significantly, so you will have trouble expanding your site in the future if you keep uploading new content.
Of course, a dedicated IP address will solve all these problems. With a dedicated IP address, all system resources will be dedicated to you only, including network speed, memory and storage space.
Not all servers are built the same, so even if you plan on having your own dedicated IP address, you must ensure that the server has the correct hardware and network requirements to manage your website and inbound traffic.
Dedicated IP hosting has other benefits as well. Since you are the only customer using this server, you are given more control over how it works because you will not affect the experience of other customers. You can control how your storage is distributed across your websites and manage network performance so you are always prepared for any sudden traffic spikes.
Different hosting accounts offer different levels of support, so this could mean owning a dedicated IP address requires more manual maintenance. But you will need to check with each server hosting provider for more details.
Dedicated IP vs Shared Hosting – Which is Better?
It should be clear that a dedicated IP address has a number of advantages over shared hosting, but is it always the obvious choice? Below we’ve covered the difference in price and performance between Dedicated IP Hosting and Shared Server Hosting on Bluehost, a popular provider.
Dedicated IP Hosting Statistics
- Price from $ 119.99 to $ 209.99.
- 4 cores @ 2.3-3.3 GHz
- 500GB to 1TB mirrored storage.
- 4-16 GB RAM
- 5-15 TB bandwidth
- 3-5 unique IP addresses
Shared Hosting Statistics
- Price $ 7.99 to $ 23.99
- No dedicated IP address.
- Storage, performance and network are limited
Bluehost uses terms such as “unlimited” or “unlimited” for its bandwidth and storage. This means that Bluehost tracks the average performance of its clients against shared plans and ensures that their servers can support clients using it based on that data. And while your bandwidth and storage are technically unlimited, if you go beyond what they consider normal usage, Bluehost will contact you and ask you to reduce it a bit.
For most people, only the difference in cost is the reason that shared hosting is more than enough. Unless you are using a popular website, dedicated hosting is unnecessary. But if you start to increase your traffic, moving to dedicated hosting can be a profitable investment.
We hope we were able to explain Dedicated Hosting to you and help you decide whether to upgrade or not. If you have any more questions about this, be sure to leave a comment below.
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