When it comes to hosting a website on a shared server, there is always quite a common controversial issue: Is it necessary to have a dedicated IP address for your website and why, if you just can use a shared one? Using a dedicated IP address provides with certain crucial advantages, but let’s start with the definition first.

What is a Dedicated IP Address?

IP stands for Internet Protocol and is defined as a unique address assigned to each computer that is connected to a certain network. Internet Protocol address plays the role of a unique identifier that is used to provide valid location of a machine or a website in a given network.

What is the difference between a Shared and Dedicated IP address?

The difference between shared and dedicated IP addresses is quite simple. A shared IP address is a single address used by multiple websites within one web server. In this case, the web server should do some extra work, parsing the user’s request to the correct website. Having a Dedicated IP address means that the website has its very own address, and you can use either this IP address or the domain name of your website to access it from the web. For a more obvious example, please check the diagram below:

Why having a dedicated IP address is beneficial?

There are a lot of reasons why it is recommended to use a Dedicated IP address for a website hosted on a Shared server, but we shall look through the main ones here:

• It grants access to your website any time you need

• It is beneficial for the email sender’s reputation

As it was already mentioned above, having your website run over a single IP address may cause unpredictable difficulties, and email service may also be affected in this case. There are some situations when some user, sharing the same IP address with you gets banned or blacklisted for spamming which may possibly affect your email service as well. Using a dedicated IP address for email isolates your service from the abuse consequences where others are at fault.

• It is good for a business identity

If you are going to host your own online store or other e-commerce related website, and you are not going to use additional third-party services for handling payments, it is quite necessary to grab a Dedicated IP address and an SSL certificate for the website in order to provide security for your customers' data.

• It is required for particular third-party applications/scripts

Sometimes, a particular application or script that you may wish to run on your server requires a dedicated IP address.