Drupal is a great content management system that has seen active development since its initial release – which was nearly two decades ago – and also enjoys a lot of support from various companies on the Internet. If you’re looking to get a Drupal site up and running, there are always numerous options available, including some specialized solutions designed to get you off the ground as quickly as possible.
However, sometimes those specialized solutions won’t be ideal for your needs, and you may need to look in an alternative direction to get the perfect deal for your current project. Understanding the differences between the various types of Drupal hosting services available out there is important if you’re about to spend any kind of money on that.
In general, you’ll want to compare the details of shared hosting and specialized Drupal hosting services. Both can be viable options in the right moment and learning to recognize when a situation calls for either of the two is one of the best skills you can develop if you’re going to be deploying many Drupal sites in the future.
Shared hosting is a common type of hosting service that can support not only Drupal, but other platforms such as FileMaker as well. It’s popular among many webmasters, and it’s commonly used when there is a need for some flexibility in the kinds of services that are going to be deployed to the hosting. It’s important to understand that shared hosting puts you on the same server as other users, which may not be ideal if you’re looking for peak performance and want to minimize the response times of your site.
Of course, when a shared hosting service is configured properly, you won’t even know that others are using the same resources. As long as the server has enough resources in the first place, everything will run smoothly and without any issues.
However, an outage in one site may potentially affect others if the situation is not isolated properly, which could be unacceptable for some types of Drupal sites, especially those revolving around constant community interaction. It’s important to look into statistics about the service you’re planning on using, and verify that they are reliable enough to be a long-term partner for you. Nowadays, it’s quite easy to check that with the help of the Internet.
Drupal hosting
On the other hand, we have Drupal hosting – specialized services aimed at hosting Drupal sites and nothing more. While this may sound limiting, if you’re not planning on running any other kind of site in the first place, it can often be a much better deal than regular shared hosting. The prices are usually much more attractive, and you’ll commonly get more specialized support that can directly address popular Drupal issues, as opposed to people who’re only familiar with general hosting problems.
There are many benefits to using Drupal hosting if speedy deployment is your primary concern. For example, you’ll have an installation of Drupal ready and prepared, and all you’ll have to do is run through the initial configuration to set up accounts and other details.
You also won’t have to go far to get various popular plugins and other tools that you may need to use on your website, and this alone is one of the main factors that draw people to Drupal hosting in the first place. The variety of preinstalled Drupal tools will change from one hosting service to another, but as long as you spend the time to compare what each company has to offer, you should be able to spend very little time tinkering with settings and configuring plugins.
Generally speaking, dedicated Drupal hosting works best for those who need to get something up and running with as little hassle as possible. It’s aimed at users who already have some vision about their Drupal site and want to skip the formalities in setting it up, while those who want to mess with different settings and configurations might want to look into a more general type of hosting service.
Drupal hosting is also great for users who’re not that familiar with the platform, as they can often provide much better customer support, and give you all the attention you may need in resolving even a more complicated issue. The same can’t be said for most types of general hosting companies, so if you’re concerned with the level of support you’re going to get, you should definitely look into something more specialized.
