Today, the majority of potential customers are researching and selecting brands based on a quick internet search. Within a few seconds, with the help of a few keywords, a brand can be selected. But what if your website, no matter how well-built it is, is being negatively affected by your hosting?
Hosting companies GoDaddy and Bluehost make it easy to create and host a website, but these affordable plans can cost a company in the end.
Here are 5 reasons why shared hosting can ruin your website and how dedicated hosting may be the solution you’re looking for.
Clutter Leads to Slow Speeds
Shared hosting, while cost-effective, can lead to a slower website and a poorer customer experience. Companies like GoDaddy and Bluehost put dozens and even hundreds of websites on the same server. This means that every website is pulling from the same limited amount of CPU and RAM.
If all the websites on the shared server don’t need a lot of bandwidth, this works out fine. However, if one of these sites is getting a lot of traffic, your website will take longer to load. Or if one of the other sites is heavy with graphics or videos, your customers and potential customers will have to wait longer to see your content.
More than that, if one website grows, capitalizing on the bandwidth of the server, then all of the other websites on that same server will suffer.
Loading Speed Affects Conversion
With shared hosting, load speeds are a gamble. Some days, load times will be great, but when the server is busy, your load times will become much slower. Unfortunately, there is no way to control this with shared hosting–you’re at the mercy of the server and the other websites hosted on it.
A survey by Skilled showed that customers expect websites to fully load within 2-4 seconds. If your website takes longer than 4 seconds to load, the viewer will likely click away from it.
A second can be the difference between a life-long customer and a missed opportunity. More than that, slow loading pages can drastically affect a person’s satisfaction with the company. Return customers might grow frustrated with your site and navigate away from it simply because they didn’t want to wait.
With just a few seconds making such a huge difference, there’s no reason to leave load times up to chance!
The Possibility of Being Blacklisted
Being found on Google is one of the best ways for businesses to grow. Because they want to make sure they’re only offering the best and most relevant information, Google works to ensure they rank websites that follow the rules. However, if they find that a site isn’t using best SEO practices or is guilty of spam, they will blacklist that website.
This is a great practice unless you are sharing a server with one of the blacklisted sites. Google doesn’t blacklist the domain, but the server IP address. So if you, by random chance, share a server with someone who is blacklisted, you can lose over 90% of your organic traffic to your site, even if you did nothing wrong.
Limited Opportunity for Creativity
Many websites today look and feel similar, meaning that few of them truly stand out from the competition. Many shared hosting companies have cookie-cutter websites that run the same software, have a similar design, and respond the same way.
With dedicated hosting, you retain creative control with your site, making it truly your own.
Difficult to Scale
As your business grows, you might want to beef up your security, install certain modules, or switch to a more powerful server for hosting. With shared hosting, you’re at the mercy of the host. To get any desired upgrades, the host has to jump through many different hoops. This means it could be months or even years before you’re able to make the changes you desire. The truth is, shared hosting isn’t a good solution for a growing business.
Shared hosting is an affordable solution that can end up costing a business owner in the end. Begin planning for growth today and learn more about dedicated website hosting. By having a single server all to yourself, you can ensure that your website will load quickly, that you won’t be blacklisted by Google, and your site can grow with you. Learn more about the power of dedicated hosting today.
