Canadian Webhosting Forums

[Teo]

What's a Shared IP?

Every domain name that is home to a website has an IP address assigned to it. An IP address is the real address of a website or server. Usually, in shared hosting where there are hundreds of websites sharing one server those same sites will share one single IP address.

What's a Dedicated IP?

Larger websites or ecommerce enabled sites have dedicated IP addresses. This means that your site is the only one on the internet using that unique IP number. For example, if you typed 209.131.36.158 into your web browsers address bar you would see Yahoo!'s website come up. This is their dedicated IP address and no one else’s. This is their unique address on the web that has been attached to the domain name yahoo.com.

If you have a business oriented website then you probably will need a dedicated IP address for your site. Especially if you have a merchant account and accept credit card payments on your site. You can't even get an SSL certificate for your website until you have a dedicated IP address.