By Purchasing a Dedicated IP your site is the only one on the Internet that will be using that unique IP address. For example, if you typed http://64.233.187.99/ into your web browsers address bar you would see Google's web site 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 google.com
What is a Shared IP?
Every domain name has an IP address assigned to it. An IP address is the real address of a web site or server. Domain names were developed because it is difficult to remember long IP numbers like 234.123.66.7. Instead of having a unique IP address for every domain, you share one IP address with all of the accounts. The downside to shared IP's is that some countries, like China, censure particular web sites by their IP address. If a web site they censure is on the same server as yours, and China blocks that web site using the shared IP address, then your web site and the hundreds of others on that server are also blocked.
How to purchase a Dedicated IP?
To purchase a Dedicated IP,
1- Login to your Client Area http://www.st-georgehosting.com/clientarea.php
2- Go to Services > View Available Add-ons
3- In the Dedicated IP box, choose the account you want to add the new IP to and click Order Now
4- Follow the steps to checkout your new IP.
Note: Because of the IP address change you may experience a period of about 24-48 hours where your site can appear to be non-functional. This is the standard propagation time that is required to update your DNS throughout the world. Please note, your Temporary URL will also be changed and will be unavailable while the Dedicated IP is installed on your account. This is normal and you will be able to view your site by visiting your site using your new Dedicated IP within 24-44 hours.
How much is a Dedicated IP Address?
Because of the nature of a dedicated IP address, St-George Hosting would need to charge you for the service becuase we have to purchase the IP addresses and because only your account benefitted from a dedicated IP address, we would not be able to achieve economies of scale for that particular IP address. The fees are $3.00 per month. You will be charged in advance, a year’s fees of $36.
Are my e-mails going to be affected when purchasing a Dedicated IP?
Email will not be affected by obtaining a dedicated IP address. Other than a program needing more than 10 minutes to send out emails from a mailing list, there is no benefit to email between a shared and a dedicated IP address. All email, including forwarded email, is sent out through our mail proxy servers. Obtaining a dedicated IP address will not prevent your emails from being marked as SPAM, having an ISP block the IP of the mail proxy server, or pass a reverse DNS test for places such as AOL. People sometimes are under the wrong impression that these things will change by obtaining a dedicated IP address. They won't change.
Why do I need a Dedicated IP?
There are times when you would want to have your own dedicated IP address, a unique IP address available exclusively for only a single hosting account. Some of these special situations are as follows.
- When your website is running e-commerce applications and thus requires SSL certificates, which by the way, can only be installed on dedicate IP addresses.
- When you want to run certain software that requires some ports to be opened to work. However, if you have a dedicated IP address, you could request to open certain ports to enable your software to function.
- For search engine optimization purposes. This however, is not fully proven yet.
