All websites need to be hosted on a server. This may be a physical server in your office, a server offsite or even abroad or a server in the cloud. There are a number of different options when it comes to choosing your hosting package for your website and it is important that you understand the differences between them.

The most common type of hosting for most small – medium sized websites is shared hosting. This means your website files are stored and pulled from a server which also hosts a number of other websites. If you have more than one website you may decide to buy or lease a dedicated server but put all your sites on one. This means they will all have the same IP address.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using shared hosting. One of the main advantages is that the cost is usually a lot cheaper than a dedicated server. The host will maintain the server in terms of updates to hardware and software and so there is very little for you to have to do. The disadvantages of shared hosting is the fact that you don’t have as much say over what settings are used on the server and what other sites can be hosted on there. IF you end up sharing with a site that gets reported for being spammy or where the owners use the server to send out mass mailings, you may find that your site gets tared with the same brush and even blacklisted.