Shared servers are a great way of saving money as the cost of server maintenance, monitoring, patches and troubleshooting is evenly distributed. Think of it like a room in a hotel: the cost of housekeeping is included in your rate, based on a pro-rata of maximum occupancy.

In comparison, dedicated server hosting gives you complete control over your environment and the resources available within it, although you alone are responsible for the bills. It’s easiest to think of it as renting a house: you take it on as a ‘single’ unit but only use the rooms as and when you need them. Want more space? Open another door, and start arranging the furniture.

The advantages of shared hosting are easy: it’s cheaper. And if you sign up for a managed hosting service, all the admin and maintenance is handled by your provider, which makes it pretty much hassle-free.

The disadvantages depend on your provider’s standard setup. If you use software with specific configuration requirements (i.e., Moodle), then you could have issues with upgrades and deployment. And if your provider packs in the users to maximise revenue, you might run into performance problems that impact the speed or availability of your website.

In comparison, all of e-Learn Design’s servers are configured specifically for Moodle installations, with contention ratios kept deliberately low (i.e., there’s space to move). In simple terms: the hotel is never fully booked, so there’s always a clear path to your room for your guests.

Dedicated servers are recommended if your needs go beyond a shared server’s capabilities. The most common need is to accommodate more traffic, but could also be due to enhanced security and compliance requirements, like financial institutions or anyone storing particularly sensitive data. As a dedicated server is essentially a ‘private’ environment, you have absolute control over what happens within those boundaries.

So, the pros of a dedicated server are obvious: privacy and space. The main con is the cost, but if you have multiple Moodle sites to manage or an ever-expanding user base, then the freedom of unlimited resources is certainly attractive.

Additionally, on e-Learn Design dedicated servers, you get a free UAT site (User Acceptance Testing environment) that allows you to check that your updates do what they’re supposed to before you go live. This means that you can review the final stage of the course creation process in real-time, ensuring an optimal user experience for every learner.

Just like Moodle, e-Learn Design services are modular: only sign up for what you need. And all hosting packages are scalable, so you can move up the levels as and when your usage dictates. For shared servers, the deciding factor is disk space – starting at 3GB, you can move in stages up to 35GB. For dedicated servers, you always start with 100GB of disk space, so the deciding factors are memory and CPU. For this bit, think of your dedicated server ‘building’ as a library:

All e-Learn Design hosting agreements come with basic support. Called the Quick Fix Promise, if we can fix it in 15 minutes or less, it’s free! Covering bugs after migration, installation or integration, as well as snags during set-up, you don’t need to worry about additional costs racking up when you’re focused on getting started.

If it turns out you need a bit more of a boost, we offer annual support contracts in a variety of flavours, as well as StartUp bundles for more short-term requirements. If you don’t know where you stand, you won’t know what you need, so we give you the chance to test your requirements before making a commitment.