We want to share some advice and education on website hosting that most people aren’t even aware of. Most people would think that website hosting is the same across the board. Meanwhile your website seems to be slower than ever, while you have visited websites that seem to respond immediately to your every click. What is exactly is going on here? Read on.
A website consists of many files (among other things), and these files need to be “hosted” on a server so that the world can see it. This server hosting your files is what we call in the industry: “hosting”.
Believe it or not, there are many differences and options when it comes to hosting, but we’ve simplified this to two options for our clients: Shared and Dedicated Virtual Hosting.
Most hosting that you see advertised on the internet is Shared Hosting. What this means is that there is one server that holds hundreds (sometimes thousands) of websites. These websites also share the same software. If a website on the server has a problem, it will affect the other websites on that server. This is the downside, since your website can become slow since another website is consuming all of the resources on that server. The upside is that it’s extremely affordable. As with anything you purchase, you get what you pay for.
The other option that we offer and recommend for our clients is Dedicated Virtual Hosting. The difference here is that a server will still have many websites (nowhere near the amount of websites that shared hosting has). But the main difference is that these websites do not share the same software. Each website has an allotted amount of resources that it can use, and if it exceeds that amount, it only affects that website. This will result in a much quicker websites for all, and in most of our tests, just moving websites from Shared to Dedicated Virtual Hosting can increase speeds by 3x.
For a real life example, head over to Graticle.com and take a look around. After that, try out Graticle.net. The difference here is that Graticle.com is on our Dedicated Virtual Hosting, while Graticle.net is on our Shared Hosting. The difference is remarkable.
When visitors come to your website, you need to be open (aka: online) while also having the floors clear of clutter, clean, and a friendly staff ready for questions (aka: a quick website). Otherwise, the back button is too available and too convenient for potential customers.
Find out how we can move your website over to our Dedicated Virtual Hosting and start taking your website (and hosting) more seriously.
Give us a call at (360) 450-3711 or email hello@graticle.com
