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There is hosting and then there is hosting and then there is hosting. But, what really is the difference between one type of hosting and another.

To begin with there are the usual issues related to hosting: the speed, the disk space, the bandwidth, the price, and the like. But today I am going to point out one important parameter about hosts that you might overlook, but should not. That almighty parameter is: Who else is hosted on the same server as you are?

Are you puzzled about why that is an important issue? Well, there isn't really any reason to be puzzled. When you live in a particular home, are you not concerned with who lives in the same neighborhood? Which other websites inhabit your server is a matter of similar concern.

To begin with, the horror of hosting a website is to find it exists in a bad neighborhood. Here are some of the things that can do wrong with a bad neighborhood:

* If someone else, I repeat, not you, but someone else has been using your server to email spam, then your server could already be in the list of blacklisted servers. This means that your mail could end up in the junk mailbox of the receiver. Some of the more aggressive spam filters would actually prevent your mail from ever reaching.

* Regardless of your online marketing strategy, a significant portion of your traffic will originate from search engines. If the other web sites on your server are in the bad books of the search engine, your site could be devalued too. This is especially true if you also share the same IP.

The list can go on. Indeed, it can get scarier. But without much more ado, let me jump to the solution to all these problems. Are you ready? Well, the simple solution is to get dedicated web hosting. This means that your site or sites are on a server that is dedicated to your web sites.

That is not the only advantage of a dedicated host. You are basically in full control over the kind of software you load, the kind of programs you run. The kind of background processes you run. The nature of your back up strategy. And a whole lot more.

Dedicated hosting does cost more. So that is something you will have to evaluate against the benefits you get. In any case, an informed choice is better than an uninformed one.