Choosing between shared hosting and dedicated hosting requires conducting a comprehensive overview of what exactly it is your business requires. Some businesses thrive perfectly well on shared plans, while others fall to pieces due to the inability to service a burgeoning clientele. Meanwhile, some businesses fare well with dedicated hosting, whereas others quickly fall behind on their bills and discover themselves without a website.

Storage Space

Shared hosting comes with limited server space. Providers who claim to offer unlimited space assume you know better than to go upload crazy. Mind you, shared servers typically offer enough space to host thousands of pages, hundreds of images and dozens of videos-which admittedly is more than enough for most business owners.

Meanwhile, dedicated hosting allows you to obtain private access to anywhere between 100GB to 2,000GB of space, depending how much you're willing to pay. This is the optimal choice for those seeking to create a Web 2.0 site, such as a social network like Facebook or a video sharing site like YouTube.

Bandwidth

Every single shared plan limits bandwidth usage to some extent. While it may not seem obvious at first, you need only read the fine print. That said, if you were to place a high definition video on your site and 10,000 visitors suddenly decided to tune in to watch it, your provider would pull the video for using too much bandwidth.

Dedicated plans come with between 500 GB and 2500 GB of bandwidth, depending on how much you pay. That's more than enough to support 10,000 or so simultaneous visitors. And you have the additional option of tying multiple dedicated servers together in case you are indeed looking to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Control

Lack of control is by far the greatest limitation to shared web hosting. You have no say regarding the server's operating system, not to mention any installed programming modules. If you sign up for a shared plan, only to discover it lacks the module you require (e.g., Coldfusion), you're out of luck.

With a dedicated plan, you control everything. You may designate a particular operating system, uninstall undesired modules and install those applications and software suites you deem necessary for your business. Some providers also permit you to specify how much RAM and what type of processor to utilize.

Conclusion

Dedicated hosting plans offer numerous advantages over shared plans, but because of its expensive price, it's only an optimal solution if you're certain your business will bring in thousands of dollars each month. Otherwise, opt for shared hosting. Remember that you may upgrade your plan to dedicated if your business outgrows the server. In the meantime, you'll save a tremendous deal of money as your business builds clout.

Vivek Saxena operates IPreferQualityWebHosting, an online resource detailing the various shared hosting services offered by Host Gator.