CoreNetHub
Web Hosting
Shared vs Dedicated

🌐

Comparison

Shared Hosting vs
A Dedicated Server

Shared hosting starts at $4.99/mo and suits most websites. A dedicated server starts at $459/mo and suits some. Here is where the line actually falls.

$4.99

Shared, per month

$459

Dedicated, from

Root

Only on dedicated

Both

We run them

The short answer

Choose shared if…

Most sites belong on shared hosting and stay there happily for years.

🌱

You run a normal website

A blog, a brochure site, a portfolio, a small shop. Shared hosting is built for exactly this and the price reflects it.

Shared

🧰

You do not want to be a sysadmin

Updates, security patching and the mail stack are our problem. On a dedicated server they become yours.

Shared

💵

The budget matters more than the ceiling

$4.99 against $459 is not a small difference, and most sites never approach the limits of the cheaper option.

Shared

The other side

Choose dedicated if…

These are the signals that you have outgrown a shared machine.

📈

Sustained heavy traffic

Consistent high concurrency, or traffic spikes you need to survive predictably rather than politely.

Dedicated

🔑

You need root

Custom software, a specific kernel, unusual daemons, or compliance rules that require an isolated machine.

Dedicated

🧮

The work is CPU or memory heavy

Video processing, large databases, game servers, machine learning — anything where you need a guaranteed slice rather than a fair share.

Dedicated

🏛

Isolation is a requirement

Some audits simply will not accept shared tenancy, whatever the technical controls.

Dedicated

Side by side

The same questions, answered for both

Shared hosting and a dedicated server differ on about eight things that matter. Here they are without the marketing on either side.

💵

Cost: $4.99 against $459

Shared hosting is $4.99 to $19.99 a month. The cheapest dedicated server we have is $459, and most are four figures. That is roughly a hundredfold difference, and it is the single fact that settles the question for the large majority of websites.

🧮

Resources: a share against the whole machine

On shared hosting you get a slice of CPU and memory, with limits that are generous for a normal site and firm when something runs away. On a dedicated server every core and every gigabyte is yours whether you use it or not — which is the advantage and the cost at the same time.

🚀

Speed: the software matters more than the slice

The shared platform is LiteSpeed on NVMe SSD. A cached page is served by the web server itself, without starting PHP or reaching the database, so for ordinary traffic it is fast in a way that is not about how much of the machine you rent. Where a dedicated server pulls ahead is sustained work a cache cannot absorb.

🔑

Access: a control panel against root

DirectAdmin covers domains, email, databases, DNS, SSL, files and backups, which is everything most sites ever need. It does not give you a shell, a custom kernel, or the ability to install a daemon. Root does, and root also means the security of the machine becomes yours.

🧰

Maintenance: ours against yours

On shared hosting, patching, the mail stack, and the web server are our problem. On an unmanaged dedicated server they are yours, every week, forever. Our managed add-on exists precisely because that surprises people — it is $79/mo on top of the server.

🏘

Neighbours: shared tenancy against none

A well-run shared platform isolates accounts and caps runaway processes, so in practice neighbours are rarely what makes a site slow. But they are never zero, and some compliance regimes will not accept shared tenancy at any level of technical control.

📈

Scaling: a plan change against a migration

Moving between shared plans is instant and prorated. Moving to a dedicated server is a migration — we do it for you, free — and moving back is the same. Starting small costs you nothing later, which is the main practical reason not to over-buy at the beginning.

⏱

Setup: minutes against hours

A shared account is ready immediately. A dedicated server is typically provisioned within four hours, and then needs configuring before it serves anything — which is time you should count as part of the price.

📧

Email: included against build-it-yourself

Shared hosting includes mailboxes, webmail, SPF and DKIM, set up. On a dedicated server a mail stack is something you install and then maintain a reputation for, which is a bigger job than it looks.

Start on shared hosting if you are unsure. Moving to a dedicated server later is a migration we do for you, and nothing about starting small makes it harder.

Compare dedicated servers

Questions

Shared vs Dedicated answered

Shared hosting, in almost every case. A brochure site, a booking page or a small shop is exactly the workload shared hosting is built for, and the money saved against a dedicated server pays for a great deal of design and marketing. Move up when you are hitting resource limits regularly, not because the bigger option sounds more serious.

For a small site, usually not in any way a visitor would notice — the bottleneck is your code and your database, not the neighbours. Our shared platform runs LiteSpeed on NVMe, and for a cached page LiteSpeed answers before PHP even starts, which is hard to beat with any amount of hardware. A dedicated server wins decisively once you need sustained CPU or memory that a shared machine will not guarantee — or once the work is the kind a cache cannot help with.

When you are hitting resource limits regularly rather than occasionally, when you need root for something specific, or when an audit requires isolation. Traffic alone is rarely the trigger; sustained resource use is.

Yes, and we migrate the site for you. Starting on shared hosting costs you nothing in the long run.

A VPS sits between the two on both price and isolation. We concentrate on shared hosting and bare metal because those are the two we can run genuinely well — talk to support about what fits and we will tell you honestly if we are not it.

They can. Shared hosting includes DirectAdmin as standard; on a dedicated server the machine is yours and a panel is an option rather than an assumption.

Explore