You might have been wondering what a dedicated IP address is and if it is something you should look for when choosing a new web hosting. In this article we will explain the benefits of a dedicated IP address and also the difference between dedicated and shared IP.
IP address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a network, for example to your own computer or to a web server. You can quickly find an IP address of your computer through your browser by visiting www.ipreport.info. There are two versions of IP addresses used these days. The older and widely used 32-bit IPv4 and newer 128-bit IPv6. An example of IPv4 is 91.198.174.192, an example of IPv6 is 2620::862:ed1a:0:0:0:1. The term IP address typically refers to the older IPv4, because IPv6 is still in early stages of adoption. From now on we will also use the general term IP for IPv4.
Because of the fact that total number of IP addresses is limited and a number of free IP's is quickly running out, having a dedicated IP for your website is becoming a luxury. Most of the shared hosting plans do not use dedicated IP addresses but a shared one instead. That means that all the websites on the same server are sharing the same IP. Most of the time this is absolutely OK and there is no need of a dedicated IP. However, there are some situations where dedicated IP is a better choice or even where it is necessary.
One of such situations where dedicated IP is necessary is when you want your website to be accessible at any time, even when its domain name is not configured correctly or when you are updating DNS servers. In such case a dedicated IP address allows you to type in the IP directly to the browser and the site would load.
Another benefit of a dedicated IP address is an email sender's reputation. If you want to do some serious email marketing or you just want to be able to send emails through your website, you should consider a dedicated IP address. Such approach will isolate you from other websites on the same server in terms of sender's reputation. What can happen with the shared IP is that another website that shares your IP address might start sending unwanted spam to a big number of recipients and because of that other servers might put that IP on their blacklist. That would directly affect your email sending possibilities, even though it was not you who ruined the IP's reputation.
Probably the biggest benefit of a dedicated IP is a possibility of installing a standard SSL certificate. Of course, there is a technology called SNI that allows multiple SSL certificates to run on the same IP, but the technology is not compatible with some old browsers. If such browsers are important for you and you need an SSL certificate, forget about shared IP.
As you can see a dedicated IP address is not necessary for most of the websites. However, if you need it for some reason, you have to choose from more expensive hosting plans that comes with it.
5 comments
Dedicated IP is super important for SEO. Without it there is not much you can do since the other websites on the same IP will be constantly ruining your reputation.
These days a dedicated IP address is a must for almost any website. If you want to even show up in Google results you have to use SSL.
Well, an SSL certificate can be easily installed on shared IP as well. Almost no one is using these old browsers that wouldn't support it.
I would never buy a hosting without dedicated IP. The benefits are totally worth the extra fee.
It depends on how much is the fee. Shared IP can work just fine for most of the websites.