Does your website need a dedicated IP address?



Does your website require a static IP? This problem might appear if you need to install an SSL certificate as an example. In other cases this might be a need for SEO purposes (Search Engine Optimization) as some SEO's still like to separate websites by putting them on different IP addresses. Dedicated IP addresses are sometimes free with a web hosting account and sometimes you can easily find a hosting company that is selling the at $20 per month. You can even find web hosting companies selling them for even more. But you can avoid this extra cost by picking the right web host.

I am picking one of my usual recommendations for this review. IX Web Hosting offers cheap web hosting. The have 3 web hosting plans that would be an option for you if you need a static IP address. The ?Expert Plan? comes with one (1) static IP address which is probably fine for that stand-alone website. If you have more than website, you might want to look at the ?Business Plus? or even the ?Unlimited Pro? Web hosting plan. The ?Business Plus? plan comes with 8 dedicated IP addresses and the ?Unlimited Pro? Plan comes with 16 (!) dedicated IP addresses.

You can host unlimited domains at IX on either plan mentioned by sharing an IP address across several websites. If you decide to host each website on its own IP address you are limited to the numbers mentioned above.

In general it is best practice and courtesy to share IP addresses as much as you can. You might have heard that the Internet is running out of available IP addresses. This is not a rumor. There is a ?fix? coming, but it looks like it will take a few more years before it is fully implemented (IP6).

Sharing an IP address across several websites does not hurt your website according to statements made by Google engineers like Matt Cutts and so you should be save if you are concerned about this. If you share an IP address your web host and the server software will take care of all the backend work.