How to Know if You Need a Dedicated IP Address for Your Website?

When it comes to web hosting, most website owners go for shared hosting, as it serves most of their needs in hosting their site within their budgets. However, a dedicated hosting account offers certain advantages over shared hosting. However, it is costlier. Most importantly, your website will be having dedicated resources like server space, an IP address, etc. In this article, we will discuss if you need to opt for a dedicated IP address for your website.

Dedicated IP address and shared IP address

Dedicated IP address

With a dedicated IP address for your website, you can access your site either with the IP address or the domain name. A dedicated IP address is necessary during the installation of SSL certificate.

Shared IP address

A shared IP address happens when you are hosting your site along with several other sites on the same server. These websites will have a common IP address.

Advantages of a dedicated IP address

Chances of downtime

A dedicated IP address is used best only with a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated server. In turn, the dedicated IP address ensures the website owner with flexibility to handle high volume of traffic. However, unlike the dedicated servers, shared servers may break down when subjected to handle unexpected volumes of load. Thus, your chances of downtime, lag in performance or lagging of your site is less when compared to a shared IP address.

Direct access to your website

When redesigning you website, you may need a test location for developing your site. However, using a subfolder of your existing site (for example: abc.com/new-test-site is a test location for abc.com) may result in additional load for your live site. If search engine bots get to index it, you may have to face duplicate content issues, which may hurt your search rankings.

If you have a dedicated IP address, you can access your test site through the IP address and run your live site simultaneously in another server. Once you are ready with your website, you can simply direct the DNS settings of your domain name to the fully developed test site hosted at dedicated IP address. This also reduces your downtime and performance issues that occur while redesigning your site.

You can access your website via FTP when domain or DNS is inaccessible

With respect to the same example discussed earlier, you can access your site through FTP using the IP address, during the development phase, without disturbing the live site.

Accessing your site with the IP address will also be helpful when the domain or DNS is inaccessible.

Protect your site from being blacklisted

Assume one of the websites on the shared server along with yours is found malicious at a moment. Or, assume the shared server is blacklisted because of spamming done by one of their users. It is likely that your site suffers the penalty. However, a dedicated IP address will help you protect the reputation of your site and your site is not going to be affected by the malicious activities of others.

You may need a dedicated IP address to run third party applications or scripts

Though you can install and run a few third party apps and scripts on a shared server, there will be certain limitations with respect to their compatibility. A dedicated IP address frees you from those limitations and you will have the freedom to incorporate images, apps, etc.

In addition, scripts/programs won't break, if your hosting account is moved to a different server.

Helps in getting indexed faster in search results with high rankings

At any given point, sites hosted on a dedicated IP perform much better than the sites hosted on shared IP. Since site performance is one of the major ranking factors among search engines, especially Google, it helps in gaining good rankings among SERPs.

Necessary if you are looking for a private SSL

If you own an e-commerce website, a dedicated IP address is essential to keep your customers' data secure. As we said earlier, you must have a dedicated IP address as a condition to acquire an SSL certificate.

A dedicated IP address is advantageous for your business website. It keeps the data of your business and customers secure, builds trust and boosts your online image. However, it's costlier. Decide whether you need a dedicated IP address based on the points discussed in this article.

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