Live Chat
Dedicated hosting is meant to satisfy the needs of businesses which may have multiple websites to manage and which get a lot of incoming traffic. However, when client enterprises do sign up for dedicated hosting plans, there are some important factors, which they must take into account. For instance, businesses have to verify the degree of technical supports they will get, the up time guarantee and security protocols deployed by the host among many other factors. They also have to understand how many websites they will be free to host on this dedicated servers. There can be no one answer to such a question as the requirements are likely to vary from one business to another. The capacity of the providers is also likely to vary.
A dedicated server is typically capable of accommodating multiple sites together but the exact number of sites will obviously vary from one enterprise to the next.
However, on the whole, there are some key factors which may help you get a rough idea of this number:
– One of the first things which you must consider when trying to find out how many websites you can accommodate on a single server is the site design. For instance, you can own either a HTML website that is static and draws limited traffic or a dynamic site, which is likely to need more bandwidth as the traffic, is higher. The static websites usually have simplistically-designed web pages. They also have limited information which is why they are also smaller than dynamic sites. In comparison, dynamic websites will have web pages with more complex designs and the content keeps changing. Such websites are created using CMS or Content Management Systems. In short, to host dynamic websites you are going to need servers equipped with very large hard drives. Only with such high end servers can you hope to host as many as 500 websites at the same time. When most of the sites have been built using various types of CMS, you may have to upgrade the CPU and storage to be able to process requests for MySQL databases faster. With a moderate configuration, a dedicated server is likely to be able to support nearly 150-250 sites.
– Another key factor which helps you determine how many sites you can hope to host with a dedicated server is the bandwidth your sites need. Bandwidth refers to the total amount of data which gets sent from the site across the internet via the server. So, when your visitor numbers are higher the bandwidth needs are likely to be greater. Depending on this number and the nature of content your site display, the bandwidth needs will vary. For instance, the large files like images and video files or streaming media will obviously need much more bandwidth than sites which have static images or text. When your site gets a lot of incoming traffic you have to make sure that there is proper disk space allocation. The RAM and CPU must be sufficient to be able to cope with the increased traffic needs and sudden traffic spikes.
– The dedicated server is usually customized with software and other applications which can boost your business further. Control panels, add-ons and other third-party apps that you install therefore are also likely to eat into your bandwidth. For instance, any reasonably large site which hosts multiple accounts will need a cPanel which has at least 1 GB RAM. Even applications which are deployed as add-ons are going to need extra storage capacity. This means that the applications which you are likely to host and run are an important consideration for choosing a web hosting package. It will determine to a great extent how many sites the server can actually manage efficiently. Greater number of resources will naturally need more supports.
– When you have a very rapidly expanding website you are likely to need upgraded hard drives and CPU power because the number of clients will keep growing by the day. When your dedicated server gets overloaded there are not enough resources for all the sites. So, some websites will become slow and unresponsive. This explains why you must have a fair idea of the future needs of your business and then choose plans which can ensure that all sites run optimally.
– Besides, if you are planning to offer email-hosting solutions to your customers, you will have to consider the quantity of emails you get on an everyday basis. A rather basic email hosting plan will offer only about 25 GB disk storage space and lets you host about 100 email accounts. So, you may be able to host nearly 250 website with such a package. The nature of applications you run on a server actually determines the number of websites you will be hosting on it.
These are questions which you have to get verified by your hosting provider so that you do not face problems in the future.
