Your law firm’s digital marketing strategy is not complete without a website. A website is the core of most marketing efforts including search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC).
This is why it’s crucial to invest sufficient resources into building and designing your website, including the hosting services provider. But even before all these, you’ll need to determine the type that’s right for your law firm.
There are several types of website hosting but we’ll be looking at the two most popular ones that might be best suited for your firm. If you’re confused between shared hosting vs VPS hosting (virtual private server hosting), this guide briefly discusses both types, including their pros and cons, to help you make an informed decision.
What Is Web Hosting?
Web hosting refers to the technologies, infrastructure, and tools needed to store or publish a website on the internet.
Web hosts like Bluehost and Hostinger have numerous servers and as a law firm, you’ll be renting a share of these servers to ensure your site is always online. You’ll also get the required hosting resources like disk space, processing units, memory, and so on. When a potential client browses through your website, your web host pulls these different pages from their servers on request.
Now that you understand how hosting works, let’s look at two common types of web hosting i.e shared hosting vs VPS hosting.
Shared Web Hosting
Just as the name suggests, shared hosting involves the sharing of resources by websites. Here, several websites are hosted on one server and get a slice of the same resources, including bandwidth. As such, shared web hosting plans have minimal costs. You should know the key differences between Shared Web hosting vs WordPress Web Hosting.
Pros
- It’s the cheapest type of web hosting
- Doesn’t require technical skills since most upgrades are automatically applied
- Flexible and allows you to upscale as your firm grows
- Most shared hosting plans are professionally managed.
Cons
- Your website doesn’t have dedicated resources
- Other websites on your server could affect your site’s performance
- Shared hosting has higher security risks.
VPS Web Hosting
VPS hosting creates a virtual space on the host server where your website gets dedicated resources. In this case, the cost will depend on the number of resources your law firm’s site requires.
A single server can host several virtual instances, but each is independent of the other, and so are hardware resources. This means no matter the traffic neighboring sites experience, your site stands unaffected.
VPN hosting is provided by Hostgator, so here we are sharing with you the Hostgator VPS Web Hosting Review. You will get to know the importance of VPS Hosting for your website and the benefits.
Pros
- Higher scalability, such as the ability to add or remove disk space and memory as needed
- VPS hosting plans offer more security because site files for each instance are stored separately
- Unlike shared hosting, VPS servers give you full system access so you can install, uninstall, disable, or enable features as you prefer
- Greater stability and site performance than shared hosting.
Cons
- VPS hosting plans are priced high; the more resources you need, the higher the cost
- Hosting and maintenance require some technical expertise a car accident lawyer might not have.
Which One Is Ideal For Your Law Firm?
After learning the differences between shared hosting vs VPS hosting, you’re probably wondering which one is best for your law firm. For a full analysis, consider speaking with a law firm digital marketing agency about your website needs first.
Shared hosting is ideal for small to average-sized practices that are on a tight budget. This plan offers room for lawyers who are just starting to test the waters most affordably.
VPS hosting, on the other hand, is perfect if you anticipate business growth, expect high traffic, or if you have a large budget for website marketing.
