Once you are ready to get your own hosting provider, you will find out that you will have a lot of choices when it comes to putting your website online. Even if you found a fantastic and reputable hosting provider, you will still have to choose one of the several plans available and not all hosts do a decent job of explaining each one. Shared web hosting packages are always available but looking at dedicated hosting offerings, you might be wondering what you will be missing out on if you stick with shared web hosting. While dedicated hosting is a good path to choose for many, you should know some of the disadvantages of this type of website hosting and how to overcome them.

High Cost

The average dedicated hosting plan can cost around 5 times as much as a shared package. Other plans may go as high as 10 times that amount and that amount is significant since there are other things that you can get for your website depending on your needs such as marketing or an autoresponder or possibly a template. If you are just getting started, carefully examine what the shared web hosting package has to offer and find out if it is enough to meet your needs. If you are not expecting a lot of traffic to your site in the early year, you won’t really need a dedicated server until later on. Take advantage of your first year by placing ads on your site so you will have extra money to afford your dedicated hosting package without emptying your wallet.

Maintenance Issues

There are more things that you need to worry about if you have a dedicated hosting plan. This is not a problem for webmasters that know their ways around the server but beginners may be frustrated with learning things like rebooting the server when there is a crash or configuring the server operating system if problems arise. Experimenting with the different server features is risky if your site is currently live because you may experience downtime which is never good for your visitors. Even the rebooting process puts your site temporarily offline.

Some dedicated hosting plans leave you with limited maintenance operations because the server is located in a remote area. These types of website hosting plans require you to rely on your provider to do these operations for you. Read what you get from the dedicated plan and what operations you are allowed to perform before getting that package. If you are not yet ready to deal with these issues, you are better off with settling with a shared website hosting and then spend more time studying dedicated hosting or have someone who has a dedicated hosting package assist you.

Several hosting providers give little to no support in getting you started. This is considered a red flag for those that are not completely knowledgeable in managing your own server. While finding a good hosting package in every angle is difficult, consider doing more research in finding good website hosting providers that really prioritize support. Even if these plans are priced higher, you are paying for the assurance that your site will be in good hands with your chosen dedicated hosting plan. Finally, watch out for any penalties that you may incur if you exceed your bandwidth or disk space.