In the world of web hosting there are two main routes to go when choosing a web hosting
package, shared or dedicated web hosting. The one that you choose is going to depend on
your requirments.
Shared hosting means your website would be using the same server as many other websites.
The drawback of shared hosting is the activity of the other sites on that server
directly impacts your site. Other high bandwidth sites will slow the performance on
your site, and however unlikely, if a site manages to crash the server, well your
site goes down too. Other drawbacks are disk space and bandwidth limitations.
There are also many advantages to shared hosting, the primary one being cost. The
cost of shared hosting, because split between so many websites is relatively low.
Other advantages are that they wont lack any of the major tools and technology you
will require if you choose your hosting package carefully.
Shared hosting is the recommended way to go for personal and small to medium sized
companies.
Dedicated hosting means control of your own server to do as you will. Many of the
limitations of shared hosting will not exist. You are free to install which ever
tools you require, and free to fill up the hard drive as needed. The response time
in comparison will be a lot faster since your site wont be competing for resources
on the server.
The major disadvantage of dedicated web hosting is price, but if your site is demanding
lots of traffic then this shouldn't be an issue.